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When teacher Catharine Higginson, 45, discovered by accident that her husband James, 42, had installed an app on her phone which allows him to track her movements, read her texts and even listen to her conversations she didn’t plan to divorce him as her friends urged, for being creepy and intrusive.

Instead, the mum of three from Dorking, Surrey, says it makes her feel loved and safe

After 10 years of marriage I had always believed husband James and I didnt have secrets from one another.

Turns out there was a huge, totally shocking one that I only discovered by accident.

Last year I was teaching in a particular building at school where there was no mobile phone reception which meant I missed a text from my bank with an activation code to make an important financial transfer.

When I got home I started to apologise to my husband James who immediately replied, “Oh, don’t worry about it – I’ve sorted it.”

When I looked at him, puzzled, he continued: “I was able to get into your phone and locate the code to activate the transaction” before casually adding: “I don’t need you here to be able to read your text messages.”

The chilling words sent a shiver down my spine. He calmly informed me he had logged in remotely and read all my text messages in order to find the one from the bank.

I couldn’t get my head around how he’d done it. It was then I was enlightened about the world of tracking apps.

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We exchanged several cross words and it took me a long time to calm down.

I was really shocked and while I think James trusts me, it did make me wonder how long he’d been checking up on me.

I realise it sounds like my husband’s being creepy and a stalker. But he isn’t. He’s a self-employed website developer, therefore a geek, and is probably more up to speed about latest technology than the likes of MI5.

He is so tech savvy he controls all the gadgets in our house, mobile phones too.

He’d installed a tracking app by Cerberus on my phone and those used by my children Daisy, 19, Tilly, 16, and Max, 12, from my first marriage.

In fairness to him, I had totally forgotten him telling me he’d done it as the app doesn’t show on the phone’s home screen.

Plus I had no idea what the app could do or what James could access with it.

These apps are not there to spy on your wife! But James, whenever he feels like it, can sit at his computer and pull up a specific web page, log in and locate all the family phones.

He can then download my texts and listen to conversations I’m having with people wherever I am. He can also see who I’m with via the camera.

The same goes for the kids on their phones too.

While I’ve no interest in cheating on my husband there have been awkward occasions.

I was once on my way to a male student’s to give him tutoring and received a text from him which should have said “Make yourself at home” but predictive text turned it into “Make yourself horny”.

I did panic about how I’d explain that to my other half. And recently I was organising a surprise birthday party for James and had to send his friend a message, “Sorry if I sounded off. James was sitting next to me.”

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It was a totally innocent text but I did dread having to explain it to James with his all-seeing app.

But James reckons it’s a safety device – and who am I to argue? I usually drive home through the countryside and now it’s winter it’s pitch black.

My car keeps breaking down, so it has set his mind at rest that he is able to track me.

While I was very shocked at first about the extent of the snooping I ultimately don’t have a problem with him doing this because I’m not up to anything.

But I can see that for those for whom cheating is in their DNA, they’d panic about being caught out.

When I posted about it on Facebook friends were shocked. One wrote: “I’d leave my husband if he did that”.

Someone else reckoned “it’s grounds for divorce,” and another friend remarked, “it’s a total invasion of privacy – how dare he?”

Even close girlfriends think it’s weird, saying: “Oh my god – that’s really creepy.”

I always argue back that it depends on the level of trust you have in your marriage.

I’m not having an affair and I don’t see it as him spying on me – I view it as him caring about my wellbeing. I know people say “what about your right to privacy” but I know he trusts me.

And in fact, it is really practical. Recently I was meeting a friend and was running late without any battery power in my phone.

She rang our home to see where I was and James was able to log on and track me and tell her my ETA.

But what I didn’t realise was that in tracking me that night, James was also listening in on my conversation with my students which I know sounds bizarre.

When I got home the first thing he remarked upon was that I should be less casual with them when saying goodbye. All I’d said was “I’m buggering off home now.”

I was absolutely stunned. The phone was in my handbag so it was dark, but even so he was able to turn it on and listen to me.

But a couple of weeks ago, the app really came into its own when I missed a call from my daughter Daisy at 3am.

Like most mums, I immediately thought “Oh my God, what’s happened?”

So James got up, turned on the computer, and we were able to work out that she was actually at her friend’s. She had rolled on to her phone in her sleep.

Of course Daisy’s 19 and an adult but when you’re living in our home, these are our rules. We do support her financially and we do pay for her phone.

Fortunately she’s not got a problem with it. I’ve raised her not to hide secrets from us.

While I don’t mind it on the whole, it is spooky that someone can hear and see everything you do and say.

I can see it from my hubby’s point of view. He works from home and wants to know that we’re all safe. Even so it did feel quite odd at first, in a Big Brother kind of way.

And if any of us did actually go missing then the app would prove invaluable – in that case it’s an intrusion well worth it in my opinion.

As for spying on your other half? I reckon other couples are freaked out by the idea not because they’ve got anything to hide, but they’re thinking guilty thoughts – perhaps they regularly send flirty texts or are having an emotional affair.

In short they’d really rather like to have something to hide.

Someone else made an interesting point to me that if your other half installs a spying app on your phone maybe it’s because, actually, he’s got something to hide.

I hadn’t thought about that – could James be cheating on me? I don’t think so. But as I don’t control our apps I wouldn’t know.