facebook sex chats blamed for one in five divorces

most couples, social networking websites such as Facebook are a harmless way to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances. But many are finding out the hard way about the online temptations on offer, as the sites are blamed for an increasing number of divorces.
According to one firm of lawyers, almost one in five of the divorce petitions it deals with cite Facebook as a factor. Mark Keenan, managing director of Divorce-Online said: 'I heard from my staff there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was.
'I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook. The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.'
Critics claim the internet tempts the weak to cheat on their partners, while suspicious spouses turn to the web to find evidence of unreasonable behaviour, from flirting to full-blown affairs. Companies are also cashing in with software which allows customers to spy electronically on their partners.
Karen Moores, at Sydney Mitchell Solicitors, said: 'Over the last five years there has been a definite rise in the number of internetrelated divorces, and increasingly so over the last two years.
'It started off with Friends Reunited where people were hooking up with exes from their school days, arranging to meet up and then starting affairs.
'Now it's Facebook, with people discovering their partners emailing or pictured with other people, or on websites that they really shouldn't.
'And we've often found it's not necessarily the wife or husband who has discovered their errant partner's wrongdoing.
'It's the friend of a friend who you added 12 months ago and forgot about, who then says "you'll never guess what I found your husband doing with my friend".
'The internet is very dangerous and people are deeply complacent about their privacy. If I was up to anything, I would never do it anywhere near the internet.'
Around 14million Britons are believed to use social networking sites regularly. Last year a 28-year-old woman, from Newquay in Cornwall, ended her marriage after discovering her husband had been having a virtual affair in cyberspace with someone he had never met.
Amy Taylor split from David Pollard after discovering he was sleeping with an escort in the game Second Life, a virtual world where players reinvent themselves.