Love rats left with nowhere to hide

LONDON - Love rats, run - your day of reckoning is at hand. Valentine's Day was the perfect occasion for the British launch of a lie-detector phone that will tell you if the passion's left your relationship.

It is not the only method of romantic surveillance: type "catch cheating spouse" into Google and thousands of entries come up from companies in the serious business of breaking up relationships.

From kits testing stains of dubious origin to software that will record every keystroke made on your loved one's computer, the market is teeming with ways and means of checking up on cheats.

The Love Detector exploits voice-analysis technology used by police and fraud agencies to help you discover what your partner's voice is telling you that their words are not. At £1.50 ($3.90) a minute, it's not cheap, but it can confirm doubts and save the cost of dinner (although divorce lawyers are even more expensive).

The detector has already gone down a storm in Israel, where it receives 1.5 million minutes' worth of calls a month.

Users call the Love Detector number, then call their lover while the Love Detector listens in. The line gives its professional analysis after the conversation has ended.

Unfortunately it doesn't exactly tell you "This man is a lying pig" or "She's sleeping with your brother", but it rates things such as how interested they were in what you were saying, and how much hesitation and passion there was in their voice.

According to Ido Pollack, one of the men responsible for bringing the line to Britain, it is just a bit of fun.

"The technology behind it works and it's useful, but I wouldn't make a marital decision based on it.

"It's really for new and potential couples, something to use to see if a certain colleague in the office likes you."

Another snooping device comes from the US company CheckMate, which sells a kit for £49.99 ($129) that will detect traces of semen left behind after sex. Nice. All you have to do is rummage around in the laundry bin for a dirty sheet or pants and take a swab of an offending stain, pop it in a special solution and hey presto! You can "instantly prove infidelity and show there are grounds for divorce".

One woman on the website seems ecstatic: "I ordered your kit and found semen ... now I can make his life hell."

If fishing around in the laundry basket and applying chemicals to your lover's briefs isn't really your thing, an array of technology is at your disposal.

A company called OverSpy lets you monitor everything that your partner does on their computer by sending you email reports of the websites they have visited and emails they've sent.

"Is your spouse cheating?" they ask. "Don't you have the right to know?" Well, when they put it like that ...

The new generation of mobile phones lets you track your partner's every move from the comfort of your home. The SDA mobile comes with CoPilot satellite navigation systems that allow the tracking of the phone by logging on to a website and entering a password.

A spokesperson said: "We don't really shout about it but this is the perfect device to check if your partner is cheating on you, Ralph Fiennes style ... "

Another British company, Pipistrel, has produced software that allows you to retrieve deleted text messages from your partner's phone - if you can just get your hands on their SIM card.

If you want to tap into your boyfriend's answerphone, no problem. Want to open your girlfriend's letters without her knowing? There's a manual to show you how ... but who really uses these things? The Garden Pharmacy in Covent Garden says most of its CheckMate kits are sold to men.

According to the feminist author of Love, a User's Guide, Jane Knowles: "When men say they care for a woman, they really mean they control her.

"It's true that working women now have many more opportunities to meet other men and this, combined with the shift in power created by women earning more money, can make men feel vulnerable and paranoid. They also love gadgets and there is an element of them wanting to be the good guy playing the detective."

It is amazing what people can do, and infidelity has been around for ever, but what's more amazing is the business to be made out of it. As long as there's money in it, the love detectives are here to stay.

It's enough to make you stay single.

- INDEPENDENT