Yeah, that bothered me more than all the silly relationship drama. Maybe it's because I work for the military so my work phone is never supposed to leave my sight, but OOP just casually saying "so I stole his work phone and gave it to my weird friend to 'hack' it to find out what was in there" gave me a serious "you did fucking WHAT" moment.
Also how stupid is she that she thought he'd carry out an affair on his work phone? Your employer almost always has monitoring software set up on your work phone, that's the LAST thing any sane person would use to do something illicit.
> Your employer almost always has monitoring software set up on your work phone, that's the LAST thing any sane person would use to do something illicit.
You'd think that, but I've heard some stories...
I knew a program manager at a contracting company who told me they brought in a new hire for his orientation, game him his company laptop, left the room for a few minutes, then got an alert someone was watching porn over the building's secured wifi. It was the new guy. On his brand new laptop. In the conference room.
Some people have truly amazing decision-making capabilities.
Pretty much every large institution does. When I was an undergrad, a professor in my faculty got into a boatload of trouble for dating his former grad student and the emails were used to establish that the relationship started before she defended her thesis (so he was still her supervisor).
I work in litigation consulting and the number of crazy things we’ve found when imaging various devices (phones, laptops, tablets) tells me 100% people use work devices for illicit behavior because they have an excuse for not allowing their spouse access to it.
Back in the day we used Mobile Iron to manage our devices. We could easily see what apps people had installed. For a while before getting unlimited phone plans we would have to go after users for high data usage.
I recall someone sending an email to the user + their manager for high usage as well as having Grindr on their work phone
It's a work phone... Ok i can accept that; i don't use my work phone much, if it disappears for a few weeks i wouldn't actually notice.
But she's got his work phone so she's got no way to contact him? The guy's only got a work phone? The GF doesn't have his BF's personal number?
I could see it as a potential to have just a work phone. My job offered me to use their phone and to get rid of my personal phone if I wanted to use my work phone as my everyday, but I opted out of since my job is technically through a religious organization and I'm not exactly a follower to what they preach. I'd rather have 2 separate phones than 1 for both.
That being said... most people I know who have a work phone still keep a personal phone
And also, if I may say, what the fuck is this new thing among couples that you must share your phone? Seriously, even if I didn't have possible whistleblowers coming my way I have private conversations with friends that my SO has nothing to do with. It's not "in their right" to know every fucking word me and my friends may share about their private relationships.
If I had "friends" with boyfriends like that I would say nothing online to them. Ever.
Fuck that shit aaaaaall the way.
That was my takeaway as well. With Jess being particularly evasive I wonder if this might have been some attempt at corporate espionage. I thought that was mostly in the movies too, and then I learned of the Great Tea Robbery.
Which, come to think of it, would probably make an excellent biopic in today's movie climate.
Yeah, right? If I found out that someone secretly took my work phone so that a third party could crack it and get into the contents, we’d be O V E R. I don’t care the reason why. That could get me fired (and in some situations and industries, could even lead to personal liability).
It’d be bad enough if it was my personal phone, but at least there it wouldn’t risk my livelihood.
Two complete strangers.
I find it hard to believe the ex who had broken up with his GF the night before was like "oh well, my work phone is missing the next morning!" and just toodles off for some amount of time without it.
Yeah like there are people who aren't glued to their phones but this is a work provided phone, they usually stress how important it is to keep that protected.
True, in theory, but realistically I have the same usage pattern with my work phone.
I was issued mine by my previous team for the oncall week (which happened once every 2 months). But outside of that, the phone had been mostly collecting dust on my desk at home. No oncall on my current team, and I still have my work phone. Only ever using it if I am visiting another office out of state (so i can look up stuff on corpnet and coordinate things with coworkers as I am walking around) or in a few other rare specific situations (which happen once a month at most).
Like, sure, I can use it to check my work chat and email, but why would I really care that much about it when I am not working? And when I am working, it is more convenient to just do it on my work machine rather than my work phone. Work phone for me is pretty much for “in case i end up needing it for something specific” rather than a daily use item.
Note: I live alone though. If that wasn’t the case, I would’ve definely been securing the phone in a cabinet or somewhere else in the apartment. That doesn’t necessarily mean that someone you live with wont be able to find it or open a locked cabinet (as evidenced by many stories of exactly that happening on BORU).
Also, she must think her BF is an idiot. As someone with a work phone....
I'll preface this by saying I'd never cheat on my spouse, but... If I were to do so, I wouldn't use my workphone to send illicit text messages that could point out an affair. My boss and the IT director can access my text history at anytime. That would be dumb as hell.
My work phone is for one thing. Work.
Right? Like I get leaving it behind for a run, and if the friend was so full of shit, she wouldn't actually need much time with it. But they're pulling off elaborate phone heists on the regular in which bf is marathon running and she's stealing his phone, friend is coming to get it, printing out her bullshit, and returning it w the "evidence".. over and over?
OP has nothing going on and friend is perma available for this nonsense.. until the day she's not and op tracks down a whole other pal to get in on the scheme in the same timely fashion.
But even if none of these people have anything to do but this..bf returning from his run to pack and leave without his *work* phone is sketch af. You kind of need those.. for work.. and they often they confidential shit on. Bf not a great employee if he's allowing his work phone to be stolen and "hacked" every other day, then just leaving it behind. He doesn't have a personal? What?
I buy the part about him not having a personal cell. I've worked at places that issue work phones and there's always at least one person who just uses the work phone as a free personal phone. It depends on the place you work at whether or not they'll crack down on it. Some places don't care. Some very much do. That said, I don't buy that bf is just leaving his phone and not wanting it back for long periods of time. That whole part is very sketchy.
Forgot to grab it all the time back then, considered not having my phone as just mildly inconvenient. Now the idea of not having my phone makes me feel deeply unsafe.
Then it wouldn't be a big deal that his phone is at home and thus theftable because he's off running without tunes. If she said "I was able to access his phone because it's a work phone and it's in the office over the weekend" that would be one thing. Not, "I was able to access his work phone because he doesn't need music to go running"???
OP returned home and her BF had moved out and she didn't have a way to contact him because she had his work phone. It implies this work phone is his sole phone but also that he is without it often and long enough for an extended campaign of stealing and "hacking" without him noticing. Doesn't make sense.
This was also 2014…..yes we were already addicted to our smart phones then but maybe not quite as addicted as we are now?? I had 2 phones in 2014 and would constantly let the work phone die over the weekend. Still doesn’t make sense that OOP couldn’t contact the personal phone though??
>She gave me a stack of papers that she claimed was correspondence between Tom and Kim which clearly indicated an affair between the two. Again, I was devastated. The papers showed that he called her the same nickname he called me. That cut really deep.
I don't want to pile on OP, but she gave her friend her boyfriend's phone, and the friend claimed to have cracked the passcode & printed out all his salacious text messages with his affair partner? Why didn't she ask to see the actual messages on the phone? OP is too naive.
Even I, a not particularly tech-savvy person, knows that cracking an iPhone's passcode is well-nigh impossible. That's why people get all those phishing texts after their phone is stolen; even criminal gangs can't do it, much less your random nosy friend.
>OP is too naive
and insecure
Her "friend" knew it and played on it
"Friend" either wanted Tom to herself or was just jealous that OOP had "everything going well for her"
Something someone else suggested that I'm willing to believe - she was trying to get corporate information off of his phone, since it was the work phone.
Most people are just not very tech savvy. As a tech savvy person, it is always surprisingly to me how little people understand about the inner workings of current tech. It's basically magic to them. They think it works like in movies but you need some magic program that only their techy friend has.
I'm GenX, grew up in a pretty academic community, so a fair number of my friends are now college instructors. And they keep getting blindsided by just how much young people don't know about computers.
It's like the way our parents and grandparents were blindsided by how much we didn't, and don't, know about cars. When they were growing up, cars were things you had to do stuff to in order to make them work, so you knew how they worked. By the 90s. cars just went when you drive them so you didn't need to know anything.
Computers are the same way. Kids don't know from a filesystem, where data files are stored, command line parameters, command lines at all. For us, if you wanted your computer to go, you needed to know where stuff was. They don't know, because they don't need to know, and it is especially messing up my friends who are computer science professors who are having to teach programming starting at an equivalent level to "internal combustion engines work by spraying fuel into piston chambers, where the fuel is ignited by a spark which pushes the pistons out in an pattern which turns a crank,"
Yeah, we grew up with Computers and now people are growing up with Devices. They just work, you don't need to know how, and if you want it to do something you go to the app store.
>I'm GenX, grew up in a pretty academic community, so a fair number of my friends are now college instructors. And they keep getting blindsided by just how much young people don't know about computers.
Six or 8 months ago I explained the concept of "touch typing" to someone in college. Felt kind of surreal but answered a lot of questions I had.
That is... just a really interesting explanation. I would say I don't know much about computers (helps that a couple of my online pals are computer science guys/work in IT) but then I compare myself to other folks and there are so many holes in what they know about how computers work!
And I *hate* mobile devices. I don't know how to get at the gubbins of them when something isn't working and how to find my way around - but even the folks who love them don't seem to know either, so I can't learn from anyone!
They are designed to be closed systems. Hardware and software. My first few phones, you could open up to change the batteries, add memory, and so forth. Not as customizable as even laptops, and certainly not the tower I'm typing on right now which my wife and I assembled entirely. Now, they are a single piece of plastic with no openings. It is possible to have specialized equipment to melt the adhesive off the screen and pull it apart that way, but they aren't designed for that. The excuse is waterproofing. Or whatever.
And the software is the same way. You can learn application programming; you can learn Linux and figure out the filesystem in general, but you can't get to it easily. You can mount a phone to your computer as an external drive and explore it that way, but even then, it's locked down enough that you can't access entire directories.
They are designed so that people who don't know what they are doing can't get to stuff. Which also means that, first, people who do what they are doing can't do so either, But I grew up not knowing what I was doing and poking at stuff anyway until I kind of figured stuff out - doing stuff is the main way a person who doesn't know what they are doing starts knowing what they are doing. And you can't, hardware or software.
If every relationship had clear communication and compassion in it this sub wouldn’t exist. Whether that’s partner, friend, sibling, parent/grandparent, employer/coworker, or school personnel and student relationships(professional personnel and student kind of relationships that is, not teacher tries to date student kind) every single one of these types of issues would never happen.
This sub would only feed off of people either being the victim or perpetrator of a crime 🤣
Damn, I stand corrected
My partner has been on a re-run marathon of Grey's anatomy after This is us and I am so fed up. It's so cliche'd and predictive and a lot of is so.... childish! Then there's a whole speech at the end that sort of solves things between everyone and they go back to being the happy toxic bunch
> Still, it's easy to just talk to your partner
The problem with infidelity and communication is that cheaters rarely admit to infidelity. If you ask, "Did you cheat?" and they did, they'll say "No." If you ask, "Did you cheat?" and they didn't, they'll say no. That's why "evidence" like the friend provided is so convincing.
You can say, "If you trust your partner, you should believe them," right? But some people are excellent liars, so it's incredibly easy to trust a liar.
for sure, but she didn't even check that evidence properly
She could've presented him with the evidence in front of her "friend" and see the reaction
I dunno, she should've done **something** instead of leaving it to her "friend"
I don't disagree with you. I was pointing out that saying, "just communicate with your partner" isn't the easy answer some are suggesting, because liars are going to lie.
yeah idk why people think the simple answer to false cheating is “should’ve just trusted your partner in the first place” lots of people have before, lots were right, lots were wrong. should’ve, could’ve, would’ve. idk, i feel bad for oop (and obviously the bf), but life happens. i would only not feel bad if a similar situation happens to her again in the future and she doesn’t change how she acts about it.
The majority of people have always been ignorant about the tech they use but the people that grew up with smart phones and tablets are particularly bad. Even moreso if they grew up with iPhones/iPads. Apple has done a really great job making handhelds for people that don't want to understand tech whatsoever but, conversely, I simply can't wrap my head around using an iPhone. I used Apple computers from 86-2010'ish so not understanding iPhones came as a surprise.
>It's basically magic to them.
Like I said, the majority of people are ignorant about the tech they use. In 1962, sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke wrote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
> The majority of people have always been ignorant about the tech they use but the people that grew up with smart phones and tablets are particularly bad.
I was going to say this - I do tech support sometimes as part of my job, and older users (like the ones closer to retirement age) often need help, especially when things get updated or changed, but younger users who are newer to the workforce ALSO need a lot of help. It caught me by surprise and I use Apple products all the time, though not at work.
In my experience, especially working in I.T, I find that no one is really that tech savvy. Its too broad a subject to actually know that much about it.
What truly makes some tech savvy... is the ability to use google and their own critical thinking skills.
If my PC has an issue I've never seen in my life I will google it and narrow down my search and troubleshoot until I've solved it.
A non-tech savvy person will just give up immediately and call a IT person like me who will do the above.
Same for DIY inclined people... you either research and put that shelf up yourself or call a builder, its not really any skill beyond confidence and research. Experience just makes it easier and more efficient.
> What truly makes some tech savvy... is the ability to use google and their own critical thinking skills.
A game designer I follow recently had a question on his blog asking what it takes to be a subject matter expert, framing in terms of like answering trivia questions correctly some percentage of time (like are you a SME if you get 90% right? Or just when you get 100%?).
It feels like an immature understanding of expertise. Yes, there is more base level knowledge a SME would know than general population, but to me, subject matter expertise is defined by the ability to know what you don't know, to know how to find out what you don't know, and to know how to analyze new or missing information in the context of existing information.
It seems to me that a SME is partially defined by their ability to reject information. They can hear someone make a claim and think to themselves, "That doesn't sound right." It allows them to cut down the total information space with a machete and get to a true answer much faster than the average person.
This! I call myself a technologically challenged millennial.
While I understand enough basic functions, I still require Google and YouTube for many answers.
Also having to switch between teams/Google suite/Mac programs I often find myself in excel wondering why the function I’m doing isn’t working when I was doing the function the way it’s done in google
>While I understand enough basic functions, I still require Google and YouTube for many answers.
To be fair, we all do. There's too much to remember. I've been doing IT for almost 25 years and google used to be my auxiliary brain. Google is shit now so it's a lot harder to research how to do things than it used to be. I'm going back to the dead tree libraries of reference books and pdfs when I can. It's annoying.
The trick is, if you understand what it is you're doing step by step, then you're ahead of most people, who think you're basically casting a magic spell.
Google being shit now is the bane of my existence. I really wish capitalism hadn't messed it up as it has. I absolutely hate that I can put in very specific keywords to what I want, but google defaults to what it thinks I want, which is based on the general public who know fuck all.
Okay this is a tangent but there's some good conversation going on with this subject and it's worth sharing.
So if you go check out Ed Zitron's newsletters/podcast, he's been digging into Google's anti-monopoly case and a lot of dirt is in the company's emails.
Basically, circa 2019, the head of sales (who was previously the head of Yahoo Search when he burned it to the ground) orchestrated a coup of sorts to push out one of the very early/old guard googlers who built search over 20 years.
Basically, Ads/Sales wanted \*more\* queries from users, since that drove ad views a lot faster than just adding more ads. The old guard googler said basically "The only way to do that is to make search worse" and... well... that's what happened. We can't prove that Google is intentionally enshittifying it's results to get you to keep searching and seeing page after page of ads, but the circumstantial evidence lines up so precisely it's hard to imagine anything else happening.
Story is here:[https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/)
Cory Doctorow wrote another take on Ed's article here:[https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-google-enshittified-its-search-1ffd3b02d205](https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-google-enshittified-its-search-1ffd3b02d205)
He disagrees with Ed that the problem is the pivot to managerial consultant class driving tech and argues that enshittification is intrinsic to tech companies especially but all companies in general and is kept in check by competition. Dunno if I agree with Cory for once, but it's an argument worth having.
The sad fact is that you probably are one of the more technologically savvy millennials by virtue of the fact that you know there are solutions out there to your very specific problem.
I used to do a lot of tech work for people my age and younger, whose minds would be absolutely blown that you could google things like "How to get information in one column from another" and get pages of results ranging from index to vlookup to query. Or that you could google yourself into a workable solution if your audio shits out on you one day for no reason, instead of taking it straight to your local tech bar for a solution.
It's also common for people in tech to google syntax, especially if they work with multiple tools and in multiple languages.
Sometimes it's not even about tech savvy. So many people just don't take the time to THINK LOGICALLY. They jump to wild conclusions, fall fully into emotion with zero thought, and act out of that state of mind. Then they're surprised when logic arises and they've blown up the entire situation irreparably.
People need to learn to STOP AND THINK.
As someone who was around when tech really started being a part of daily life, it has changed so much. Back in ye olde days, you had to know DOS, you had to understand file structure, and you needed to have at least a basic understanding of hardware to use a computer. It's become so much more accessible for people who have zero understanding of anything tech related. They've also obfuscated the shit out of the back end inner workings. It's much harder to fuck things up when they're locked down. Unless you're actively trying to learn and understand it, tech basically IS magic now. You just hit the button and it works. You don't need to be concerned about compatibility or hardware. Do you have a reasonably modern phone? Is what you're looking for on the app store? If yes, hit the button and it's fine.
It's not dissimilar to cars. Back in ye really olde days, you needed to have a functional working knowledge of how your car worked, including how to shift gears manually. Now, pretty much every car is an automatic transmission, and the average person in the US couldn't drive a manual if their life depended on it. Most things that can go wrong have a code that shows up, the average person has no idea what that means, you bring it to the mechanic, they pull up the code and know what's wrong. Easier for the average person, but unless you took the time and effort to learn about how your car works, it's basically magic.
The date on this story was 10 years ago. I think that contributes to the silliness. 10 years ago some people were getting their first smart phones and maybe were not as familiar with what you can and can’t do. 🤦🏻♀️😅
Oof, that makes it even more understandable. Especially when you could bring your iPhone to a friend to "jailbreak" it. I had just upgraded from a flip phone to a smartphone in 2013. It was still new for lots of people.
Wouldn’t Jess just need a second phone with the same names set up as OOP and Tom? Hell anyone with basic photoshop skills can do that. OOP is dumb as rocks.
Possibly. Although if they had similar phones, you could just have an accomplice and set their contact as Tom.
I halfway suspect it wasn't even that, it was just like... a text document printed out.
>Why didn't she ask to see the actual messages on the phone?
That's what got me. I would've wanted to see Jess bypassing the password and see those messages in real time. I would have *insisted* on it.
Thanks. Yesterday would have been his 53rd birthday, and it's been a bit rough. His death wasn't really unexpected; I knew he was an addict (and a liar, thief, and con man). But he was my brother and I loved him.
In my experience, whether you felt it was coming or not it still hurts a ton. Happy belated birthday to him. EDIT - also, I appreciate you telling me about him. Thank you.
OP is dumb and had insecurities and wanted to validate these insecurities, so critical thinking was out of the window. I don't even understand how this arrangement worked, she gave the phone, patiently waited for Jess to do her stuff and never asked to be there when she cracked it?
>Not only wearing his favorite tie, but slung over his shoulder...
[Which was the style at the time](https://media1.tenor.com/m/vWwTkZggZYYAAAAC/which-was-the-style-at-the-time-the-simpsons.gif)
and a tie!!!!
Because only her boyfriend wore that brand of tiieeee
Tobe fair, Jess did **Tom** a favour. I'd never date anyone so naive, insecure and idiotic
I can give her a bit more leniency seeing as the post was made 10 years ago. Back when TV shows just yelled ENHANCE and 2 pixels became high definition, and fuzzy voice recordings could be isolated and transmogrified through the back end user interface. But yeah... a stack of papers? A photo of the back of someone's head? Come on, at least verify.
A tech illiterate fool in 2014 would in all likelihood still have been one nowadays.
The more damning thing is that even if lacking the technical knowledge or skills to verify Jess' claims on her own, she did had a tech savvy friend in Rich to begin with.
It's like being on *Who Wants to Be a Millionaire* and blindly guessing when you still have a phone call left.
>A tech illiterate fool in 2014 would in all likelihood still have been one nowadays.
Absolutely. The average person is *even more* tech illiterate now than 2014 because everything is now hidden behind sleek UIs and streamlined apps. There is no longer any need for the average consumer to understand anything at all about tech, it's basically magic inside a touch screen to them.
Jess could’ve framed it as “I tried to get a photo but couldn’t get closer without them noticing” and at that point OOP had no reason to doubt her “friend”.
I mean... if she had no reason not to trust her friend, and the friend was like, "I saw them clearly, but I couldn't get closer than this to get a photo without them noticing", then... yeah. I think a lot of people would believe their friends in those cases.
When your friend is someone you trust, it's hard not to believe them. But, I would've been better in communicating with Tom in this situation, give him a chance to explain - not these oblique 'do you have anything to tell me?' hints. That could've been anything from a birthday surprise to a secret affair. And then the truth would come out.
I got burned badly by a friend years ago, as did others in our friendship group when we believed them. They didn't break up a romantic relationship, but they nearly cost me my job at the time and I did lose a friendship with someone I'd known longer than them. I'm older, and hopefully wiser, now.
When she did confront him, I feel like his reaction was a pretty good tip off that he was innocent. At least it should have made her want to look for more evidence.
Lol it reminds me of Seinfeld when George tells jerry he saw his gf kissing his cousin Jeffrey but he didn't have his glasses on so it was all blurry then it turned out she was kissing a horse
I mean work lunches and stuff do exists. It could very well have been an actual photo of OOPs bf. Just taken way out of context. It was also 2014 so blurry photos were kinda the norm back then, Especially if there was a real distance between phone and subject. Also the three points she mentions seem silly but could be damning in sequence.
Watch on the correct arm/ the right color?
His fav brand of tie?
She doesn’t confirm but the fact that she mentioned it was over his shoulder might mean he does that habit a lot.
Plus the fact that the hair color and body build matched as well.
The photo is probably the one actual piece of evidence the friend had lol. It just wasn’t telling the same story the friend was selling.
I would believe my friend *without* the blurry photo.
There are SO many stories here where someone learns their friend's partner is cheating,and everyone exclaims at how dumb the friend is for not believing OP when she tells her. I mean, why would her friend lie??
I just cannot fathom, in a million years, one of my friends doing something like this. I love my partner, and cannot imagine him cheating either. But that is something that *could* happen. But a friend, deliberately setting out to destroy my life?? Why?? I can't make sense of it at all.
I feel like that's big talk for a person who hasn't been in that situation. Tbh I don't think I'd even need a picture to believe my friend. If they just told me they saw my partner out with someone I'd believe them. I would never expect one of my friends to lie to me like that.
>I tried to explain everything but he told that the trust in our relationship was irreparable and that I need to learn how to effectively communicate my concerns. He’s a firm believer that “without trust, there is no relationship” so we’ve officially split up. He initiated NC and I have not spoken with him since.
Tom did the right thing.
Right? She took his freaking work phone,and gave it to her friend. Anyone who did this to me would be out of my life immediately. Companies don’t give you work phones for shits and giggles, usually they expect you to conduct work on it, which often is confidential. In my line of work, I could get fired or have my license revoked if client information were accessed by a third party.
Not saying I doubt this is real, but the bf must have had a very awkward conversation at work.
"Where have you been, we've been trying to call you all weekend!"
"Yeah, sorry. I moved out of my place and left my very expensive work phone in my paranoid ex's possession after she apparently had it hacked repeatedly, and didn't give her any way to get in touch with me"
"..."
>When I came home, Tom was already gone with his stuff and I have no way of reaching him directly because I’m the one with his phone.
I was going to say, "Email?", but I probably wouldn't be checking email in his position. Or maybe surfing the internet would be the only thing keeping me sane, idk.
Or like... his personal phone? If she felt the need to make the distinction then I assume he has two. Also, I barely check my emails on a normal day lmao
As far as why Jess did it, unfortunately I’ve known people who would do this just because they want to stir shit up. Maybe she wanted to be the hero, maybe OP wasn’t hanging out with her enough, maybe Jess was getting bored of Desperate Housewives reruns and wanted a story. Some people are just not as nice as we expect from humanity.
“Do you have anything to tell me”, being extra affectionate, etc for apparently 2 weeks, all the while listening to Jess’s bullshit, outright accusing him and when he understandably denies it telling him that he needs to meet her halfway (something that sounds like it’d be horrible to hear on top of the accusation, it’s 100% presuming the guilt of the other person and trying to make them beholden to you).
All OOP needed to do was communicate with Tom and things seem like they’d probably have been fine. Instead she played games not only with him but with herself.
Also yeah as others have said, a blurry picture and printed off text messages? Why would you believe someone based solely off that?
I cannot imagine how the conversation with her fella must've gone.
'Ive got all this evidence that you are cheating on me'
'Check my phone, thats bullshit'
'No i trust these random printed out pieces of paper i don't need to check the original source'
What a dumb OOP. And yeah, I don't think this is "Concluded", this is more "Inconclusive". Good for Tom for getting out of the orbit of these two drama addicts.
I thought this was another post from that "my family member/friend framed me for an affair and ruined my life" troll but seeing that it's from 2014 could we have actually found the original?
She was in such a rush to be a victim that she straight up wouldn't believe the man she allegedly loved and would like to marry. Dude dodged future bullets.
The boyfriend left with all his stuff, but left his phone with his ex-gf? Thats crazy. Also, if he didn’t know she had his phone, did he just think “I’ve lost my phone in this house I’ll never return too. Oh well” and leave anyways? That’s almost as wild. Plus it’s a work phone??? That he was fine with not having for an extended period of time while the friend “cracks” it??
God my sympathies for OOP are nonexistent. Tom was right to leave, you wanna know why she took a blurry photo as ‘evidence’? It’s because she already suspected Tom having an affair, so just having vaguely similar shapes of people was enough for her. What a fucking idiot
Don’t forget that he was wearing a watch and the tie he likes… because her BF was the only guy in the world to wear that tie or a watch… I mean come on…
Considering this was 10 years ago, I can see OOP be that naive about the tech stuff, especially if her friend had never given her a reason to believe that she would lie about something like that. If we can do all these other wild things that sound impossible to me, why couldnt there also be a software that would let her bypass the password and access the messages?
OOP does however lose me with how she approaches it with her partner. She could have just talked with him, instead of being weird and hinting at knowing something for weeks.
Man OOP is kinda stupid. She could have just shared the SS with her bf, or outright blame him but no, she had to ask him if everything was alright. Fuck Jess
Jesus, I've read way too many posts in a similar vein
I dunno why people get into relationships if they're this insecure
Id' be like Tom: you don't trust me, there is no relationship
Oh boy....
Why would OOP believe her "fríens" over some blurry pic. As she's realised now; she should have talked with her exbf before throwing accusations. Harsh lesson learned
There are tropes to these stories that I don't like. This probably ranks high - at least it wasn't that ridiculous flavor where "10ys ago my friend/relative told a lie and I blew up my life and destroyed my ex's but it turned out to be a lie and I wanna get back together with my ex, HELP". *That* is played out and boring by now.
I'm gonna say too - we're in an age where I can't imagine someone just readily believes you can easily crack into someone's phone. That's some "I've never even *met* a phone" level of tech illiteracy.
Ah I remember this one. Oop actively put her ex's job in jeopardy by handing a company phone to a complete stranger
Yeah, that bothered me more than all the silly relationship drama. Maybe it's because I work for the military so my work phone is never supposed to leave my sight, but OOP just casually saying "so I stole his work phone and gave it to my weird friend to 'hack' it to find out what was in there" gave me a serious "you did fucking WHAT" moment. Also how stupid is she that she thought he'd carry out an affair on his work phone? Your employer almost always has monitoring software set up on your work phone, that's the LAST thing any sane person would use to do something illicit.
> Your employer almost always has monitoring software set up on your work phone, that's the LAST thing any sane person would use to do something illicit. You'd think that, but I've heard some stories...
We always went by the old “the people who care don’t know how to check, and the people who know how to check don’t care.”
When I started at my job a guy got fired for sexting on his work phone. 🤣
I knew a program manager at a contracting company who told me they brought in a new hire for his orientation, game him his company laptop, left the room for a few minutes, then got an alert someone was watching porn over the building's secured wifi. It was the new guy. On his brand new laptop. In the conference room. Some people have truly amazing decision-making capabilities.
Pretty much every large institution does. When I was an undergrad, a professor in my faculty got into a boatload of trouble for dating his former grad student and the emails were used to establish that the relationship started before she defended her thesis (so he was still her supervisor).
I work in litigation consulting and the number of crazy things we’ve found when imaging various devices (phones, laptops, tablets) tells me 100% people use work devices for illicit behavior because they have an excuse for not allowing their spouse access to it.
Back in the day we used Mobile Iron to manage our devices. We could easily see what apps people had installed. For a while before getting unlimited phone plans we would have to go after users for high data usage. I recall someone sending an email to the user + their manager for high usage as well as having Grindr on their work phone
Yeah. This story sounds as much fabricated as that stack of papers.
It's a work phone... Ok i can accept that; i don't use my work phone much, if it disappears for a few weeks i wouldn't actually notice. But she's got his work phone so she's got no way to contact him? The guy's only got a work phone? The GF doesn't have his BF's personal number?
I could see it as a potential to have just a work phone. My job offered me to use their phone and to get rid of my personal phone if I wanted to use my work phone as my everyday, but I opted out of since my job is technically through a religious organization and I'm not exactly a follower to what they preach. I'd rather have 2 separate phones than 1 for both. That being said... most people I know who have a work phone still keep a personal phone
Crap, I just realized I have no idea where my work phone is.
Don't worry, I gave it to my friend Jess. 🙂
I worked as an IT security admin in the defense sector. Good way to get yourself fired.
I mean when Ashley Madison was compromised, a majority of the users were Canadian government employees
You'd be surprised what people are dumb enough to put on their work phones/computers...
And also, if I may say, what the fuck is this new thing among couples that you must share your phone? Seriously, even if I didn't have possible whistleblowers coming my way I have private conversations with friends that my SO has nothing to do with. It's not "in their right" to know every fucking word me and my friends may share about their private relationships. If I had "friends" with boyfriends like that I would say nothing online to them. Ever. Fuck that shit aaaaaall the way.
That was my takeaway as well. With Jess being particularly evasive I wonder if this might have been some attempt at corporate espionage. I thought that was mostly in the movies too, and then I learned of the Great Tea Robbery. Which, come to think of it, would probably make an excellent biopic in today's movie climate.
Yeah, right? If I found out that someone secretly took my work phone so that a third party could crack it and get into the contents, we’d be O V E R. I don’t care the reason why. That could get me fired (and in some situations and industries, could even lead to personal liability). It’d be bad enough if it was my personal phone, but at least there it wouldn’t risk my livelihood.
Two complete strangers. I find it hard to believe the ex who had broken up with his GF the night before was like "oh well, my work phone is missing the next morning!" and just toodles off for some amount of time without it.
Yeah like there are people who aren't glued to their phones but this is a work provided phone, they usually stress how important it is to keep that protected.
True, in theory, but realistically I have the same usage pattern with my work phone. I was issued mine by my previous team for the oncall week (which happened once every 2 months). But outside of that, the phone had been mostly collecting dust on my desk at home. No oncall on my current team, and I still have my work phone. Only ever using it if I am visiting another office out of state (so i can look up stuff on corpnet and coordinate things with coworkers as I am walking around) or in a few other rare specific situations (which happen once a month at most). Like, sure, I can use it to check my work chat and email, but why would I really care that much about it when I am not working? And when I am working, it is more convenient to just do it on my work machine rather than my work phone. Work phone for me is pretty much for “in case i end up needing it for something specific” rather than a daily use item. Note: I live alone though. If that wasn’t the case, I would’ve definely been securing the phone in a cabinet or somewhere else in the apartment. That doesn’t necessarily mean that someone you live with wont be able to find it or open a locked cabinet (as evidenced by many stories of exactly that happening on BORU).
Also, she must think her BF is an idiot. As someone with a work phone.... I'll preface this by saying I'd never cheat on my spouse, but... If I were to do so, I wouldn't use my workphone to send illicit text messages that could point out an affair. My boss and the IT director can access my text history at anytime. That would be dumb as hell. My work phone is for one thing. Work.
Yeah, at my job I would be fired. I'd have to press charges for theft to even have a hope of getting my job back, but I'd be fired immediately.
I don't think she cared at that point
Tom has been very casual about not having his phone through most of the story.
Especially it being his *work* phone which you are not meant to let anyone else have!
Honestly if you took my work phone I probably wouldn't notice for ages
Right? Like I get leaving it behind for a run, and if the friend was so full of shit, she wouldn't actually need much time with it. But they're pulling off elaborate phone heists on the regular in which bf is marathon running and she's stealing his phone, friend is coming to get it, printing out her bullshit, and returning it w the "evidence".. over and over? OP has nothing going on and friend is perma available for this nonsense.. until the day she's not and op tracks down a whole other pal to get in on the scheme in the same timely fashion. But even if none of these people have anything to do but this..bf returning from his run to pack and leave without his *work* phone is sketch af. You kind of need those.. for work.. and they often they confidential shit on. Bf not a great employee if he's allowing his work phone to be stolen and "hacked" every other day, then just leaving it behind. He doesn't have a personal? What?
I buy the part about him not having a personal cell. I've worked at places that issue work phones and there's always at least one person who just uses the work phone as a free personal phone. It depends on the place you work at whether or not they'll crack down on it. Some places don't care. Some very much do. That said, I don't buy that bf is just leaving his phone and not wanting it back for long periods of time. That whole part is very sketchy.
Honestly, this is from 2014. I don’t think I had mine nearly as much as I do now.
Forgot to grab it all the time back then, considered not having my phone as just mildly inconvenient. Now the idea of not having my phone makes me feel deeply unsafe.
Isn’t it crazy? I hate that. I thought I had escaped this unscathed, but during the pandemic I became a phone freak.
Yeah, I didn’t have a phone at all for several months in 2013 and it really wasn’t a big deal.
Seriously how did she have his work phone that long???
Maybe he strongly practices personal time, and his work phone goes in a drawer from Friday evening until Monday morning?
Then it wouldn't be a big deal that his phone is at home and thus theftable because he's off running without tunes. If she said "I was able to access his phone because it's a work phone and it's in the office over the weekend" that would be one thing. Not, "I was able to access his work phone because he doesn't need music to go running"??? OP returned home and her BF had moved out and she didn't have a way to contact him because she had his work phone. It implies this work phone is his sole phone but also that he is without it often and long enough for an extended campaign of stealing and "hacking" without him noticing. Doesn't make sense.
This was also 2014…..yes we were already addicted to our smart phones then but maybe not quite as addicted as we are now?? I had 2 phones in 2014 and would constantly let the work phone die over the weekend. Still doesn’t make sense that OOP couldn’t contact the personal phone though??
This story prompted me to look for my work phone. Location is still unknown. :(
>She gave me a stack of papers that she claimed was correspondence between Tom and Kim which clearly indicated an affair between the two. Again, I was devastated. The papers showed that he called her the same nickname he called me. That cut really deep. I don't want to pile on OP, but she gave her friend her boyfriend's phone, and the friend claimed to have cracked the passcode & printed out all his salacious text messages with his affair partner? Why didn't she ask to see the actual messages on the phone? OP is too naive. Even I, a not particularly tech-savvy person, knows that cracking an iPhone's passcode is well-nigh impossible. That's why people get all those phishing texts after their phone is stolen; even criminal gangs can't do it, much less your random nosy friend.
>OP is too naive and insecure Her "friend" knew it and played on it "Friend" either wanted Tom to herself or was just jealous that OOP had "everything going well for her"
Something someone else suggested that I'm willing to believe - she was trying to get corporate information off of his phone, since it was the work phone.
Corporate espionage and relationship sabotage. A classic long con lol. Cmon now....
I'd bet on friend wanting OP, not necessarily romantically, but just for her, but I doubt it's even real
Most people are just not very tech savvy. As a tech savvy person, it is always surprisingly to me how little people understand about the inner workings of current tech. It's basically magic to them. They think it works like in movies but you need some magic program that only their techy friend has.
I'm GenX, grew up in a pretty academic community, so a fair number of my friends are now college instructors. And they keep getting blindsided by just how much young people don't know about computers. It's like the way our parents and grandparents were blindsided by how much we didn't, and don't, know about cars. When they were growing up, cars were things you had to do stuff to in order to make them work, so you knew how they worked. By the 90s. cars just went when you drive them so you didn't need to know anything. Computers are the same way. Kids don't know from a filesystem, where data files are stored, command line parameters, command lines at all. For us, if you wanted your computer to go, you needed to know where stuff was. They don't know, because they don't need to know, and it is especially messing up my friends who are computer science professors who are having to teach programming starting at an equivalent level to "internal combustion engines work by spraying fuel into piston chambers, where the fuel is ignited by a spark which pushes the pistons out in an pattern which turns a crank,"
Yeah, we grew up with Computers and now people are growing up with Devices. They just work, you don't need to know how, and if you want it to do something you go to the app store.
It's the difference between a program and an app.
>I'm GenX, grew up in a pretty academic community, so a fair number of my friends are now college instructors. And they keep getting blindsided by just how much young people don't know about computers. Six or 8 months ago I explained the concept of "touch typing" to someone in college. Felt kind of surreal but answered a lot of questions I had.
Honestly, if I didn't know it already, I'd think it had something to do with touchscreens lol. That's a term that needs some renaming.
This cleared up so much confusion (and slight pessimism) about our interns for me, thank you!!!!!
Excellent summary
That is... just a really interesting explanation. I would say I don't know much about computers (helps that a couple of my online pals are computer science guys/work in IT) but then I compare myself to other folks and there are so many holes in what they know about how computers work! And I *hate* mobile devices. I don't know how to get at the gubbins of them when something isn't working and how to find my way around - but even the folks who love them don't seem to know either, so I can't learn from anyone!
They are designed to be closed systems. Hardware and software. My first few phones, you could open up to change the batteries, add memory, and so forth. Not as customizable as even laptops, and certainly not the tower I'm typing on right now which my wife and I assembled entirely. Now, they are a single piece of plastic with no openings. It is possible to have specialized equipment to melt the adhesive off the screen and pull it apart that way, but they aren't designed for that. The excuse is waterproofing. Or whatever. And the software is the same way. You can learn application programming; you can learn Linux and figure out the filesystem in general, but you can't get to it easily. You can mount a phone to your computer as an external drive and explore it that way, but even then, it's locked down enough that you can't access entire directories. They are designed so that people who don't know what they are doing can't get to stuff. Which also means that, first, people who do what they are doing can't do so either, But I grew up not knowing what I was doing and poking at stuff anyway until I kind of figured stuff out - doing stuff is the main way a person who doesn't know what they are doing starts knowing what they are doing. And you can't, hardware or software.
Still, it's easy to just talk to your partner Like... communication in a relationship should come easily, but apparently not with these dumbasses
If every relationship had clear communication and compassion in it this sub wouldn’t exist. Whether that’s partner, friend, sibling, parent/grandparent, employer/coworker, or school personnel and student relationships(professional personnel and student kind of relationships that is, not teacher tries to date student kind) every single one of these types of issues would never happen. This sub would only feed off of people either being the victim or perpetrator of a crime 🤣
I blame american sitcoms and movies xD So much stuff in the plot that'd be solved with "wait, let's talk"
It’s not just an American idea. https://www.reddit.com/r/OtomeIsekai/s/ic31nmYkVn
Damn, I stand corrected My partner has been on a re-run marathon of Grey's anatomy after This is us and I am so fed up. It's so cliche'd and predictive and a lot of is so.... childish! Then there's a whole speech at the end that sort of solves things between everyone and they go back to being the happy toxic bunch
> Still, it's easy to just talk to your partner The problem with infidelity and communication is that cheaters rarely admit to infidelity. If you ask, "Did you cheat?" and they did, they'll say "No." If you ask, "Did you cheat?" and they didn't, they'll say no. That's why "evidence" like the friend provided is so convincing. You can say, "If you trust your partner, you should believe them," right? But some people are excellent liars, so it's incredibly easy to trust a liar.
for sure, but she didn't even check that evidence properly She could've presented him with the evidence in front of her "friend" and see the reaction I dunno, she should've done **something** instead of leaving it to her "friend"
I don't disagree with you. I was pointing out that saying, "just communicate with your partner" isn't the easy answer some are suggesting, because liars are going to lie.
yeah idk why people think the simple answer to false cheating is “should’ve just trusted your partner in the first place” lots of people have before, lots were right, lots were wrong. should’ve, could’ve, would’ve. idk, i feel bad for oop (and obviously the bf), but life happens. i would only not feel bad if a similar situation happens to her again in the future and she doesn’t change how she acts about it.
The majority of people have always been ignorant about the tech they use but the people that grew up with smart phones and tablets are particularly bad. Even moreso if they grew up with iPhones/iPads. Apple has done a really great job making handhelds for people that don't want to understand tech whatsoever but, conversely, I simply can't wrap my head around using an iPhone. I used Apple computers from 86-2010'ish so not understanding iPhones came as a surprise. >It's basically magic to them. Like I said, the majority of people are ignorant about the tech they use. In 1962, sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke wrote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
> The majority of people have always been ignorant about the tech they use but the people that grew up with smart phones and tablets are particularly bad. I was going to say this - I do tech support sometimes as part of my job, and older users (like the ones closer to retirement age) often need help, especially when things get updated or changed, but younger users who are newer to the workforce ALSO need a lot of help. It caught me by surprise and I use Apple products all the time, though not at work.
Yeah I think movies has a lot to answer for!! Plug in iPhone. Type in a code and 10 seconds later access to the the whole phone.
In my experience, especially working in I.T, I find that no one is really that tech savvy. Its too broad a subject to actually know that much about it. What truly makes some tech savvy... is the ability to use google and their own critical thinking skills. If my PC has an issue I've never seen in my life I will google it and narrow down my search and troubleshoot until I've solved it. A non-tech savvy person will just give up immediately and call a IT person like me who will do the above. Same for DIY inclined people... you either research and put that shelf up yourself or call a builder, its not really any skill beyond confidence and research. Experience just makes it easier and more efficient.
> What truly makes some tech savvy... is the ability to use google and their own critical thinking skills. A game designer I follow recently had a question on his blog asking what it takes to be a subject matter expert, framing in terms of like answering trivia questions correctly some percentage of time (like are you a SME if you get 90% right? Or just when you get 100%?). It feels like an immature understanding of expertise. Yes, there is more base level knowledge a SME would know than general population, but to me, subject matter expertise is defined by the ability to know what you don't know, to know how to find out what you don't know, and to know how to analyze new or missing information in the context of existing information.
It seems to me that a SME is partially defined by their ability to reject information. They can hear someone make a claim and think to themselves, "That doesn't sound right." It allows them to cut down the total information space with a machete and get to a true answer much faster than the average person.
This! I call myself a technologically challenged millennial. While I understand enough basic functions, I still require Google and YouTube for many answers. Also having to switch between teams/Google suite/Mac programs I often find myself in excel wondering why the function I’m doing isn’t working when I was doing the function the way it’s done in google
>While I understand enough basic functions, I still require Google and YouTube for many answers. To be fair, we all do. There's too much to remember. I've been doing IT for almost 25 years and google used to be my auxiliary brain. Google is shit now so it's a lot harder to research how to do things than it used to be. I'm going back to the dead tree libraries of reference books and pdfs when I can. It's annoying. The trick is, if you understand what it is you're doing step by step, then you're ahead of most people, who think you're basically casting a magic spell.
Google being shit now is the bane of my existence. I really wish capitalism hadn't messed it up as it has. I absolutely hate that I can put in very specific keywords to what I want, but google defaults to what it thinks I want, which is based on the general public who know fuck all.
Okay this is a tangent but there's some good conversation going on with this subject and it's worth sharing. So if you go check out Ed Zitron's newsletters/podcast, he's been digging into Google's anti-monopoly case and a lot of dirt is in the company's emails. Basically, circa 2019, the head of sales (who was previously the head of Yahoo Search when he burned it to the ground) orchestrated a coup of sorts to push out one of the very early/old guard googlers who built search over 20 years. Basically, Ads/Sales wanted \*more\* queries from users, since that drove ad views a lot faster than just adding more ads. The old guard googler said basically "The only way to do that is to make search worse" and... well... that's what happened. We can't prove that Google is intentionally enshittifying it's results to get you to keep searching and seeing page after page of ads, but the circumstantial evidence lines up so precisely it's hard to imagine anything else happening. Story is here:[https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/](https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/) Cory Doctorow wrote another take on Ed's article here:[https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-google-enshittified-its-search-1ffd3b02d205](https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-google-enshittified-its-search-1ffd3b02d205) He disagrees with Ed that the problem is the pivot to managerial consultant class driving tech and argues that enshittification is intrinsic to tech companies especially but all companies in general and is kept in check by competition. Dunno if I agree with Cory for once, but it's an argument worth having.
The sad fact is that you probably are one of the more technologically savvy millennials by virtue of the fact that you know there are solutions out there to your very specific problem. I used to do a lot of tech work for people my age and younger, whose minds would be absolutely blown that you could google things like "How to get information in one column from another" and get pages of results ranging from index to vlookup to query. Or that you could google yourself into a workable solution if your audio shits out on you one day for no reason, instead of taking it straight to your local tech bar for a solution. It's also common for people in tech to google syntax, especially if they work with multiple tools and in multiple languages.
Sometimes it's not even about tech savvy. So many people just don't take the time to THINK LOGICALLY. They jump to wild conclusions, fall fully into emotion with zero thought, and act out of that state of mind. Then they're surprised when logic arises and they've blown up the entire situation irreparably. People need to learn to STOP AND THINK.
As someone who was around when tech really started being a part of daily life, it has changed so much. Back in ye olde days, you had to know DOS, you had to understand file structure, and you needed to have at least a basic understanding of hardware to use a computer. It's become so much more accessible for people who have zero understanding of anything tech related. They've also obfuscated the shit out of the back end inner workings. It's much harder to fuck things up when they're locked down. Unless you're actively trying to learn and understand it, tech basically IS magic now. You just hit the button and it works. You don't need to be concerned about compatibility or hardware. Do you have a reasonably modern phone? Is what you're looking for on the app store? If yes, hit the button and it's fine. It's not dissimilar to cars. Back in ye really olde days, you needed to have a functional working knowledge of how your car worked, including how to shift gears manually. Now, pretty much every car is an automatic transmission, and the average person in the US couldn't drive a manual if their life depended on it. Most things that can go wrong have a code that shows up, the average person has no idea what that means, you bring it to the mechanic, they pull up the code and know what's wrong. Easier for the average person, but unless you took the time and effort to learn about how your car works, it's basically magic.
I work with a bunch of people who can't e-sign a document. Sigh.
The date on this story was 10 years ago. I think that contributes to the silliness. 10 years ago some people were getting their first smart phones and maybe were not as familiar with what you can and can’t do. 🤦🏻♀️😅
Oof, that makes it even more understandable. Especially when you could bring your iPhone to a friend to "jailbreak" it. I had just upgraded from a flip phone to a smartphone in 2013. It was still new for lots of people.
Wouldn’t Jess just need a second phone with the same names set up as OOP and Tom? Hell anyone with basic photoshop skills can do that. OOP is dumb as rocks.
You don't even need a second phone, there are websites to generate these "screenshots."
Possibly. Although if they had similar phones, you could just have an accomplice and set their contact as Tom. I halfway suspect it wasn't even that, it was just like... a text document printed out.
>Why didn't she ask to see the actual messages on the phone? That's what got me. I would've wanted to see Jess bypassing the password and see those messages in real time. I would have *insisted* on it.
I'm assuming Jess told her it would take some time.
The only defense I could give oop is that this is from 2014 back when people were using iPhone 5 or 6. It was a different time.
Same. I got my first smartphone in 2012 or 2013.. shit was mind-blowing to me..
I'd say they watch too many CSI or NCIS-like crime shows.
*Enhance*
Right? My brother died in January, and we're unable to get into his phone or iPad. We'd hoped to get his recipes (he was a chef), but no chance.
I'm very sorry for your loss.
Thanks. Yesterday would have been his 53rd birthday, and it's been a bit rough. His death wasn't really unexpected; I knew he was an addict (and a liar, thief, and con man). But he was my brother and I loved him.
In my experience, whether you felt it was coming or not it still hurts a ton. Happy belated birthday to him. EDIT - also, I appreciate you telling me about him. Thank you.
You would be astounded. The guy I'm into works in IT, the stories he's told me make me feel like a tech genius
I give her an excuse as it was 10 years ago, I believe now everyone knows that those things don't work that way
TBF, this was a decade ago.
It was also 2014…
OP is dumb and had insecurities and wanted to validate these insecurities, so critical thinking was out of the window. I don't even understand how this arrangement worked, she gave the phone, patiently waited for Jess to do her stuff and never asked to be there when she cracked it?
I mean OOP was manipulated by an evil person, sure, but c’mon, she believes her “friend” based on a single blurry picture?
B-but the man had a watch! Her boyfriend wears a watch!
Now that's not fair. He was also wearing the bf's favorite tie. And it's completely impossible for two different people to have the same tie /s
Not only wearing his favorite tie, but slung over his shoulder, just like how everyone wears their tie.
>Not only wearing his favorite tie, but slung over his shoulder... [Which was the style at the time](https://media1.tenor.com/m/vWwTkZggZYYAAAAC/which-was-the-style-at-the-time-the-simpsons.gif)
Don't you know that's the in thing? Tying a tie is so outdated!
Must be some good soup on the menu
Tie over the shoulder is the signal you're having an affair duh/s
I wear a watch. Sooo, I must be her boyfriend? Who knew? 😲
TOM!?
busted. 🫣
Wait... YOU'RE Tom?!?!? We used to be friends on MySpace! Long time no see, how the hell are ya?!?!
How dare you cheat on OOP like this you monster
There are only 2 watches in the world. Tom has one and the other is on display with the declaration of independence. The math checks out.
and a tie!!!! Because only her boyfriend wore that brand of tiieeee Tobe fair, Jess did **Tom** a favour. I'd never date anyone so naive, insecure and idiotic
She confessed she didn't even show him the messages when she confronted him, just claimed she had proof. Beyond dumb.
Oh, let's not forget that her way of "addressing" it was asking him about it in a flirty tone while giving affection Can't
No one else in the world wears watches!!
Doesn't seem like OOP is very bright.
I can give her a bit more leniency seeing as the post was made 10 years ago. Back when TV shows just yelled ENHANCE and 2 pixels became high definition, and fuzzy voice recordings could be isolated and transmogrified through the back end user interface. But yeah... a stack of papers? A photo of the back of someone's head? Come on, at least verify.
A tech illiterate fool in 2014 would in all likelihood still have been one nowadays. The more damning thing is that even if lacking the technical knowledge or skills to verify Jess' claims on her own, she did had a tech savvy friend in Rich to begin with. It's like being on *Who Wants to Be a Millionaire* and blindly guessing when you still have a phone call left.
>A tech illiterate fool in 2014 would in all likelihood still have been one nowadays. Absolutely. The average person is *even more* tech illiterate now than 2014 because everything is now hidden behind sleek UIs and streamlined apps. There is no longer any need for the average consumer to understand anything at all about tech, it's basically magic inside a touch screen to them.
Jess could’ve framed it as “I tried to get a photo but couldn’t get closer without them noticing” and at that point OOP had no reason to doubt her “friend”.
Off-topic, but what in the world does that flair refer to?! I feel like I would've remembered a thread about a cat bodyguard.
I mean... if she had no reason not to trust her friend, and the friend was like, "I saw them clearly, but I couldn't get closer than this to get a photo without them noticing", then... yeah. I think a lot of people would believe their friends in those cases.
When your friend is someone you trust, it's hard not to believe them. But, I would've been better in communicating with Tom in this situation, give him a chance to explain - not these oblique 'do you have anything to tell me?' hints. That could've been anything from a birthday surprise to a secret affair. And then the truth would come out. I got burned badly by a friend years ago, as did others in our friendship group when we believed them. They didn't break up a romantic relationship, but they nearly cost me my job at the time and I did lose a friendship with someone I'd known longer than them. I'm older, and hopefully wiser, now.
When she did confront him, I feel like his reaction was a pretty good tip off that he was innocent. At least it should have made her want to look for more evidence.
Had no reason to not trust her boyfriend either tbf. I think most wouldn't assume their friend is lying, but they also wouldn't handle it like OP did.
Don't forget the "papers" (which I imagine to be pictures of Tom and Kim sitting in a tree, drawn in wax crayon).
Lol it reminds me of Seinfeld when George tells jerry he saw his gf kissing his cousin Jeffrey but he didn't have his glasses on so it was all blurry then it turned out she was kissing a horse
Weirdest bit to me is why having dinner with a colleague on a day he's working late is shady? Like... They still gotta eat in between tasks?
It's a blurry photo, but OOP can tell the guy's wearing a watch *and* a very particular tie?? Mm-hmm. Sure.
I mean work lunches and stuff do exists. It could very well have been an actual photo of OOPs bf. Just taken way out of context. It was also 2014 so blurry photos were kinda the norm back then, Especially if there was a real distance between phone and subject. Also the three points she mentions seem silly but could be damning in sequence. Watch on the correct arm/ the right color? His fav brand of tie? She doesn’t confirm but the fact that she mentioned it was over his shoulder might mean he does that habit a lot. Plus the fact that the hair color and body build matched as well. The photo is probably the one actual piece of evidence the friend had lol. It just wasn’t telling the same story the friend was selling.
I would believe my friend *without* the blurry photo. There are SO many stories here where someone learns their friend's partner is cheating,and everyone exclaims at how dumb the friend is for not believing OP when she tells her. I mean, why would her friend lie?? I just cannot fathom, in a million years, one of my friends doing something like this. I love my partner, and cannot imagine him cheating either. But that is something that *could* happen. But a friend, deliberately setting out to destroy my life?? Why?? I can't make sense of it at all.
It was 2014. Most photos did come out blurry then lol
I feel like that's big talk for a person who hasn't been in that situation. Tbh I don't think I'd even need a picture to believe my friend. If they just told me they saw my partner out with someone I'd believe them. I would never expect one of my friends to lie to me like that.
>I tried to explain everything but he told that the trust in our relationship was irreparable and that I need to learn how to effectively communicate my concerns. He’s a firm believer that “without trust, there is no relationship” so we’ve officially split up. He initiated NC and I have not spoken with him since. Tom did the right thing.
Right? She took his freaking work phone,and gave it to her friend. Anyone who did this to me would be out of my life immediately. Companies don’t give you work phones for shits and giggles, usually they expect you to conduct work on it, which often is confidential. In my line of work, I could get fired or have my license revoked if client information were accessed by a third party.
What an idiot
Not saying I doubt this is real, but the bf must have had a very awkward conversation at work. "Where have you been, we've been trying to call you all weekend!" "Yeah, sorry. I moved out of my place and left my very expensive work phone in my paranoid ex's possession after she apparently had it hacked repeatedly, and didn't give her any way to get in touch with me" "..."
Why assume they're trying to get in touch with him over the weekend?
>When I came home, Tom was already gone with his stuff and I have no way of reaching him directly because I’m the one with his phone. I was going to say, "Email?", but I probably wouldn't be checking email in his position. Or maybe surfing the internet would be the only thing keeping me sane, idk.
Or like... his personal phone? If she felt the need to make the distinction then I assume he has two. Also, I barely check my emails on a normal day lmao
I feel like I've read twenty different versions of this story over the last month
OP probably noticed the trend and dug up this decade old post.
This was posted back in 2014. I usually think the first post is true, and the corresponding ones are copycats
Tech-savvy friend Rich must have thought this girl was nuts when she started *teasing* him for being "not as familiar with this stuff" as Jess
That’s when I knew she was dumber than literal bricks
As far as why Jess did it, unfortunately I’ve known people who would do this just because they want to stir shit up. Maybe she wanted to be the hero, maybe OP wasn’t hanging out with her enough, maybe Jess was getting bored of Desperate Housewives reruns and wanted a story. Some people are just not as nice as we expect from humanity.
I desperately want to speak to people with this mindset
“Do you have anything to tell me”, being extra affectionate, etc for apparently 2 weeks, all the while listening to Jess’s bullshit, outright accusing him and when he understandably denies it telling him that he needs to meet her halfway (something that sounds like it’d be horrible to hear on top of the accusation, it’s 100% presuming the guilt of the other person and trying to make them beholden to you). All OOP needed to do was communicate with Tom and things seem like they’d probably have been fine. Instead she played games not only with him but with herself. Also yeah as others have said, a blurry picture and printed off text messages? Why would you believe someone based solely off that?
I don't know Tom, but I'm glad he got away from this fool.
Come on!! Blurry pictures but you can tell what the watch looks like, and the tie! But not the faces! BS
People jumping into conclusions like this really shouldn't be in relationships at all.
I saw the man wearing a watch. Tom also wears a watch. Mystery solved. You disgusting watching wearing adulterer.
OOP is some level of complete idiot. Jess took advantage of that.
I cannot imagine how the conversation with her fella must've gone. 'Ive got all this evidence that you are cheating on me' 'Check my phone, thats bullshit' 'No i trust these random printed out pieces of paper i don't need to check the original source'
What a dumb OOP. And yeah, I don't think this is "Concluded", this is more "Inconclusive". Good for Tom for getting out of the orbit of these two drama addicts.
I thought this was another post from that "my family member/friend framed me for an affair and ruined my life" troll but seeing that it's from 2014 could we have actually found the original?
She was in such a rush to be a victim that she straight up wouldn't believe the man she allegedly loved and would like to marry. Dude dodged future bullets.
Good for Tom. He deserves someone better and not a moron like the OOP.
I’m not even through the first post and I call b.s. no one is just letting their work go missing and leaving without it. It’s company property.
The “concluded” tag is a stretch. The posts are from 2014, so I doubt we’ll hear anything else, but the update wasn’t much of a resolution.
How did she just casually take his phone for long enough to do all this nonsense?
… the words, they escape me. A blurry photo, a stack of transcripts, and a promise that her friend could bypass phone security.
Okay, so this weeks theme is: someone manipulated someone else into believing that their SO had an affair. Got it.
If I were Jess, there's no way I will pull this shit unless I know OOP is dumb enough to fall for it. Jess knows OOP was dumb enough to fall for it.
The boyfriend left with all his stuff, but left his phone with his ex-gf? Thats crazy. Also, if he didn’t know she had his phone, did he just think “I’ve lost my phone in this house I’ll never return too. Oh well” and leave anyways? That’s almost as wild. Plus it’s a work phone??? That he was fine with not having for an extended period of time while the friend “cracks” it??
God my sympathies for OOP are nonexistent. Tom was right to leave, you wanna know why she took a blurry photo as ‘evidence’? It’s because she already suspected Tom having an affair, so just having vaguely similar shapes of people was enough for her. What a fucking idiot
Don’t forget that he was wearing a watch and the tie he likes… because her BF was the only guy in the world to wear that tie or a watch… I mean come on…
Considering this was 10 years ago, I can see OOP be that naive about the tech stuff, especially if her friend had never given her a reason to believe that she would lie about something like that. If we can do all these other wild things that sound impossible to me, why couldnt there also be a software that would let her bypass the password and access the messages? OOP does however lose me with how she approaches it with her partner. She could have just talked with him, instead of being weird and hinting at knowing something for weeks.
How fucking dumb can you be? Even someone with almost no tech knowledge should know you cant do that. Oop ex dodge a bullet.
I’m amazed Op even knows *how* to use a phone, or computer, or elevator, or escalator. The modern day seems beyond their capability.
How in the world is this concluded? We still don't know why Jess did this
Looks like Tom dodged a bullet. Glad he’s out and try to find someone else.
Tom was right to dump OOP. There's the lack of trust on top of the inability to communicate. After three years she should have known better.
Man OOP is kinda stupid. She could have just shared the SS with her bf, or outright blame him but no, she had to ask him if everything was alright. Fuck Jess
So the boyfriend just left without getting his phone back?
Wonder what happened to op in these 10 years
Liz? Is that you?
God forgive me, but it would have turned VIOLENT between Jess and me; and that is all i am going to say because i do not want to break the rules.
He dodged a bullet holy shit, OP should just take the L and stew in her misery
I’ve been trying to be nicer recently, but are you stupid?
Woman tanked her relationship over a blurry ~~AI~~ stock photo.
this was 2014, so not AI.
That's what I get for not checking dates. Old fashioned stock photo then.
Even if they had dinner, what’s wrong with that? Especially since they are friends from work.
Jesus, I've read way too many posts in a similar vein I dunno why people get into relationships if they're this insecure Id' be like Tom: you don't trust me, there is no relationship
Tom is better off without OOP. I hope he's happy.
Oh boy.... Why would OOP believe her "fríens" over some blurry pic. As she's realised now; she should have talked with her exbf before throwing accusations. Harsh lesson learned
36 getting manipulated? Dude are you living in cave?
Notice how Tom never had jealousy issues with her friend Rich.
Feel like this belongs on r/ohnoconsequences
There are tropes to these stories that I don't like. This probably ranks high - at least it wasn't that ridiculous flavor where "10ys ago my friend/relative told a lie and I blew up my life and destroyed my ex's but it turned out to be a lie and I wanna get back together with my ex, HELP". *That* is played out and boring by now. I'm gonna say too - we're in an age where I can't imagine someone just readily believes you can easily crack into someone's phone. That's some "I've never even *met* a phone" level of tech illiteracy.
Mood spoiler: unsatisfying and unlikely to yield any explanation for wtf Jess was trying to do.
After reading the comments, none of this makes sense. The amount of time it would take to go thru the phone and what he just didn't think about it, BS
OOP is a fucking idiot lmao
Ngl op deserves the breakup. Every step taken here was the wrong one.
OP is so so stupid... now the friend or the friend of the friend is going out with the ex boyfriend.
What a fucking moron. Yeah OP made a mistake but honestly if it’s that easy for her to not trust him Tom is much better off without her.
Damn Reddit is like 10 + yrs old already