Would you share your smartphone PIN with your partner? More than half of people surveyed think that doing so is a common and healthy part of modern relationships, although only slightly more than half actually hand over their security details. Fewer still approve of other digital sharing, such as internet search history or location data.
at New York University and her colleagues came to these conclusions after investigating public habits and perceptions of sharing smartphone access with partners, and they found that there was no strong consensus on whether privacy or transparency was the best strategy.
The researchers surveyed 531 people from around the world, 378 of whom had partners. They found that 51 per cent of those in relationships gave their phone PIN to their partner, and vice versa.
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To learn more about people鈥檚 perceptions of how others use their phones, the team combined their data with a 2019 survey conducted for software firm Norton of 2050 people in the US. Of respondents in the combined survey, 59 per cent thought that sharing your phone PIN with a partner was common, while 57 per cent saw the practice as healthy. Sharing biometric log-ins, such as registering a partner鈥檚 fingerprint on your phone, was seen as common by 39 per cent of people and as healthy by 49 per cent.
More intrusive practices were still seen as common, even though people had less positive attitudes towards them. Monitoring your partner鈥檚 search history or text messages was seen as common by 43 and 46 per cent of people respectively, but these were also seen as toxic habits by 85 and 87 per cent of respondents.
Among the most negatively viewed behaviours was tracking a partner鈥檚 location, with 74 per cent of people believing it to be a toxic practice even with a partner鈥檚 consent, and 95 per cent believing it to be toxic if doing it without their consent. But despite this, some people still viewed location tracking as common: 25 per cent thought it was common with consent and 14 per cent thought it was common without.
鈥淵ou have the people that say 鈥榯rust is transparency鈥� and then you have the people that say 鈥榯rust is privacy鈥�,鈥� says Doerfler. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know that either of those is right or wrong. Whatever answer you come to, it should be mutual and consensual.鈥�
Doerfler says that cybersecurity experts always advise people to set secure passwords and not share them, but this fails to take a pragmatic view of how devices are used in relationships. She believes that technology companies should build features into smartphone software that can set complex permissions for partners, allowing access to some features and apps only.
鈥淚t might actually be good if you could use a phone more the way you would use a computer. When I was a kid, we had one computer in the house but my parents had a different login account than I did, and I would have access to different things than they would,鈥� says Doerfler. 鈥淲e have this sort of single-user paradigm with smartphones that makes it harder to have that.鈥�
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