My Fiance Says That These “unsettling Places” in His Phone History Are “pop-Ups”
What happens when you find something on your loved one’s phone that shouldn’t be there? What if it bothers you? We are investigating the mystery case “why is this on your phone?” In Tech 911 , Lifehacker tech support column this week.
Without further ado, Lifehacker reader Sarah writes:
“There are several disturbing sites in the story on my fiance’s phone, he claims that these must be pop-ups. That he wouldn’t look for them. He also said that it was entirely possible that he clicked on the image and it pulled out something that he wasn’t looking for himself, but that was in history – the same site as 4 times in a row. What do you think?”
You haven’t really clarified what you mean by “disturb,” which I assume is plain porn. If, however, I am completely of this opinion, and what you found is much worse – something super-legal, such as child pornography – then I think you need to take a tougher position on this issue and perhaps even bring the authorities , depending on what we’re talking about here. These things don’t just pop up when you browse the web.
Assuming this is a normal conversation, “why is there porn on your phone?” It is likely that your husband was browsing the Internet, doing whatever, and a pop-up with a porn site would appear on whatever site he looked at. It is more likely that he may have browsed the site and accidentally opened the offending site himself. It happens. What is probably saying in this case is whether the site appears in history as it is – indicating that it came about without any rhyme or reason – or is it surrounded by a bunch of other sites of a similar type, or google searches for what was on the specified site (thereby solving the mystery).
Now, if you see the same site four times in a row at different time periods, and there is nothing in the search history that would provide these sites with a common link, that is, the same website does not send the same popup to it window. up – the plot thickens. I’m not going to argue anyway, as I don’t see the evidence myself, but I bet it’s not so much an “accident.” I’m not saying it’s not, but the whole situation may require a little more thought.
As I mentioned earlier, if only this site appears frequently in the story – and it is, say, just the home page, and your fiance doesn’t delve deeper into what the site has to offer – I might skip on this one. Whatever the reason, it seems innocent enough; who in the end loads the first page of a naughty website and quits?
Conversely, if your partner is viewing many pages on the same domain at about the same time, well, you have your answer right here.
What would I do in this case? Do not worry. It hardly sounds like your partner is a sex addict or anything else. Unless he’s been watching “how to make bombs,” “how to cut up a corpse,” or a lot of porn – actually constant porn or even some incredibly graphic porn that goes beyond the “norm” as it was … I would skip him about this.
That decision is entirely yours and only you know the true details of what is going on, but I intuitively feel like letting it go if these websites don’t present (or point to) a clearer problem. If there is a bigger question, then by all means, has that conversation. Nobody blames you for that!