“Crazy eye is not wrong,” shouted a television celebrity who became a meme for that phrase. And maybe he was right. Only today that intuition no longer depends on smell, but on artificial intelligence. Where once a suspicious perfume or an after-hours message was enough, there are now algorithms that track faces, locations and profiles with a precision that would make the best private detective shudder. In the era of digital loveeven detect the horns has been updated with a new app: Cheater Buster.
Formerly known as Swipebusterthis application was born in 2016 with a direct promise: let you know if your partner has an active profile on Tinder, the dating app most used in the world. Its operation is simple: the user enters the name, approximate age and a location. Within minutes, the platform scans Tinder for matches.
The disturbing thing comes with its latest update: facial recognition. According to the company itselfnow it is enough to upload a photo for the system to search for visually similar profiles, even if the user uses a fake name or a different alias.
“We learned that people want answers, not suspicions,” They explain from the official website. For a price that around €17.99 per searchthe app offers data such as the last connection, the place where Tinder was last used, the date the account was created and even if the profile has a premium subscription (Tinder Gold either Platinum). All without having to have a Tinder account. The service boasts 97-99% accuracy, and a minimalist privacy policy: it only requires an email to operate. “While it may seem deceptive to use an app to catch a cheater, it is also deceptive to deceive someone,” defend their creators.
The digital jealousy industry
Cheater Buster is not alone. There are dozens of apps and platforms that promote romantic surveillance. According to the legal portal Versus TexasWe live in an era of digital infidelitywhere deceptions “no longer require motels or secret calls,” but rather apps that disguise themselves as calculators, file managers or even news readers. Among the most hidden, according to that medium, are:
- Calculator Pro+ or KYMS, which appear to be simple mathematical utilities, but hide secret photo galleries or encrypted chats.
- Telegram and Signal, which allow conversations with self-destructive messages.
- CoverMe, which offers fake phone numbers and “shake lock” features.
The phenomenon has even reached viral entertainment. On social networks, creators like Jorge Cyrus, with his series Exposing Infidelsshow the extent to which digital research has become a form of spectacle. In one of his latest videosFor example, downloads data from a Netflix account (with the user’s permission) to track the IP addresses used by her partner and, through ChatGPT and public databases, determines that the boyfriend was not in Almería, but in Valencia. Domestic technology turned into sentimental detective.
But the problem goes beyond gossip. On social networks, every click, like or search leaves a trace. We live in an ecosystem where privacy is an illusion. All you need is a phone number (as happened to my partner) or a social media account to reconstruct a person’s digital identity and access information about their love life, location or interests. From here we enter the field of “digital shadow”– Even deleted or old data can persist on invisible servers and databases.
The culture of everyday surveillance
This excess exposure turns everyone into potential surveillance, you no longer need to be a hacker to discover infidelity. Today, anyone with time and curiosity can keep track of a partner through their digital activity, their connections or their last “online.”
Recent studies warn of the growing normalization of these practices. One of them, published under the title I’m not for salereveals that many young users do not understand the real extent of tracking personal data, especially location data. another job, A Systematic Survey of Unintentional Information Disclosure, documents how small, everyday actions—uploading a photo, commenting on a post, liking it—can reveal intimate patterns of behavior without conscious intent.
The phenomenon not only affects love, but our notion of intimacy. According to ISACA, More than 60% of global users are willing to sacrifice some of their privacy “in exchange for trust or transparency.” This logic, applied to relationships, explains the growing normalization of espionage consensual: checking the partner’s cell phone, sharing passwords, using apps to track locations.
But the ethical limit is diffuse. To what extent is it legitimate to use artificial intelligence to confirm a suspicion? An Oxford study shows that AI-mediated decisions They can distort our perception of what is ethical or acceptable, especially in emotional contexts. If an algorithm suggests to us that someone is lying, are we more likely to believe it without human evidence? The British sociologist Toby Paton, director of the Netflix documentary about Ashley Madisonsummed it up like this: “Infidelity was not invented by the Internet, but it was made quantifiable. Today, deception leaves metadata.”
Additionally, privacy experts warn that uploading another person’s photo without their consent to a facial recognition database can violate he General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which considers this type of information to be especially sensitive biometric data.
In this context, tools like Cheater Buster arouse both fascination and concern. Its clean interface and its promise of “emotional tranquility” hide a deep debate: to what extent can we—or should we—keep an eye on the one we love? The moral dilemma multiplies when we remember that these searches can be done without consent. Although the app claims it does not store sensitive data, the simple act of uploading a photo of another person to a facial recognition database already violates basic privacy principles.
Loving suspicion has always existed, but today it is supported in gigabytes and GPS coordinates. Technology didn’t invent infidelity, it just made it easier to prove. Perhaps, as the Netflix documentary on Ashley Madisonthe most disturbing thing is not that these tools exist, but that they reflect an uncomfortable truth: that fidelity no longer depends only on the will, but also on the degree of digital transparency that we are willing to accept. In contemporary love, the heart beats to the rhythm of the algorithm. And sometimes, the line between love and vigilance is as fine as a “last time online.”
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