Varying levels of wrongness?

They are both pretty lousy ways to interfere with someone’s privacy. I suppose email could be worse, because more can be said in an email. I don’t know, they seem equally bad to me.

I would put them as pretty equal. Both are shitty. Intent is key. I have had people use my computer and not log out of Gmail. I think I am opening mine while I am opening theirs. I don’t do it intentionally. I just don’t notice I am in theirs since we have a lot of the same friends. But once I notice that I am in their account I log out.

I would hope people show me the same respect.

You can’t really accidentally dig through a phone. That makes you a douche if you do.

Going through someone’s email is as bad as rifling through someone’s pantie drawer and sniffing the panties. Going through someone’s cell phone is as bad as rifling through someone’s pantie drawer and trying on the panties. I hope this clarifies this matter.

@ratboy Coolest answer ever! :D

Equally wrong.

I personally wouldn’t do any of the above. Therefore, to me they’re all equally wrong. I suppose it just depends on who you ask and how they feel about such issues.

Equally bad, if the intent is the same.

At work I have that right to (if I had the time) to go through the e-mails, at home I think it is tacky to even think of snooping like that! You are obviously looking for trouble if you do.

I think both are fairly bad. It’s a seedy little deed, ugh.

They are equally wrong.
There must be an underlying mistrust of someone to want to do that.

I guess personally I would rank them based on which I’d rather have happen. There’s a lot more in my email – so that’s a check in that column. Also, you can end up looking through someone’s phone just because you’re nosy – a bad quality, but not a hurtful one by necessity. The email takes some pretty positive steps – get on computer, log onto site, use password, open files, start looking. So that’s another for email. So I would rather the cell phone opposed to the email, and I think email snooping is more wrong.

However it’s pretty moot, I think. There’s a line that, once you cross it, the various levels of wrongness beneath it are all going to require some major trust rebuilding. Bioth email and phone snooping, for me, fall below that line.

Equally bad. If it was my husband I would not care, unless for some reason he was looking through it because he felt he could not trust me. Anyone else I would be annoyed. That is if it was snooping, and not just an accidental glance while using my computer or my phone,

Yes, I concur. Equally not cool.

Bottom line, sneaky is sneaky, just like stealing is stealing.

Stealing a candy bar might not be ‘as’ bad as stealing a car, but the underlying motive, intent, is exactly the same.

Both are signs of disrespect of your personal items. They are both wrong and creepy in my mind. This lack of respect is a sign of deepr things (control, jealousy, boredom,...)
They should get a life of their own.

@bluiiznh

ZING! Yep, always a ‘deeper’ issue. ;-)

@ratboy I was trying to think of a way to rank the wrongness until I came to your answer. Perfect. Trust is what it is. I’ve never even been inclined to look at my s/o’s cell or email.

Depends who the someone is. If it’s my 13 year old daughter, then it’s my responsibility to make sure nothing bad happens to her. If it’s my spouse, then it depends on our agreement. I would want to have privacy and to give her privacy. However I can imagine other couples who do not think personal privacy is important.

Going through anyone else’s email and phone is disrespectful at best, and downright malicious at worst. When in doubt, don’t do it.

A woman is charging her husband for going into her email without her permission. He guessed her password. This is going to trial here in Canada.