Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bassexpander]

I changed the title, but hey...

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/04/117_23137.html

By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter

It's not only Internet and telecom firms that one must beware of for personal information leaks ― your girlfriend or boyfriend may be invading your privacy by secretly surfing your email account.

A 28-year-old graduate school student in Seoul learned her boyfriend's email password by peeping at him entering it when they visited an Internet cafe.

Afterward, she sometimes logged on with his password and read his email. ``First, it was just out of curiosity if he was seeing another girl or keeping in touch with his ex-girlfriend. He was not, but even after confirming it, I continued checking his email from time to time, like a habit,'' said the student, who identified herself only by her surname, Byun.

Byun broke up with the man several months ago, but she still logs on with his ID and password sometimes.

Like Byun, many young people know their lovers' passwords and secretly search their email. According to a recent survey by matchmaking company Gayeon, out of 520 singles aged between 20 and 40, 80 percent of the respondents have secretly looked into their lovers' cell phones, email or blogs.

Asked whether they knew passwords to their partners' cell phones, email or blogs, 96 percent of surveyed women and 86 percent of men said they knew at least one of the three, with 61 percent of women and 44 percent of men knowing passwords for all three.

Of the surveyed women, 64 percent said they obtained the passwords without their boyfriends' knowledge in order to see if they had other girlfriends. Sixty percent of men said they'd found out the passwords by chance during conversation or while reading email together.

``Women were more sensitive than men about their lovers' relationships with other women. It seems that lovers these days do not have strong confidence in each other,'' a Gayeon director said.

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[mithridates]

One more reason to use the Dvorak keyboard.

[doggyji]

Are you making money from selling those keyboards?

[Atavistic]

My boyfriend and I know each other's passwords for various reasons. We never check. *shrug* If you feel the need to check, something's wrong.

[Scotticus]

[Bibbitybop]

When I started to date my K-girlfriend, her ex K-boyfriend had her password and she didn't know it. They were freshly broken up, but he came to her house one night as he wasn't happy with the break up. He asked her if she was seeing me and used my name. At first, we thought one of her friends was spreading info to him, but her friends are solid. Later we found out he had her email password. Obviously, she changed it. If he could read it now, one year later, he would shit his pants knowing the things we talk about.

[ardis]

I ask my boyfriend to check my email a lot, but if he did it when I wasn't aware, I'd be a little annoyed. One of my Korean co-teachers and I were talking about boyfriends, once, and she said it's fairly normal for Korean girls to snoop in their boyfriends' emails. When I expressed my surprise and said, "Wow, that would definitely be a no-no back home," she was shocked. "Really? A boyfriend in America would be mad if his girlfriend was checking his email??" And then we chocked it up to another big cultural difference.

[ryouga013]

[endo]

[Bibbitybop]

[ryleeys]

Man, it's one level of crazy to be that intrusive as to steal your significant other's password. But it's an entirely other level of crazy (as in, stalking) to continue checking that person's email months after you've broken up.

My passwords are 12 character random combinations of both capital and lowercase letters along with numbers. Well, not completely random. It was actually part of a CD key for a Windows copy I had in 2001.

[lucas_p]

[Atavistic]

[ardis]

[cdninkorea]