Tech expert hacked into ipad to spy on estranged wife
Husband convicted of stalking after also meddling with her social media posts
A JEALOUS husband used a wall-mounted ipad that controls the heating and lights in his home to spy on his estranged wife, a court has heard.
Ross Cairns, 35, an electronics expert, exploited his knowledge of technology to monitor the movements and conversations of wife Catherine by logging into the device remotely using his mobile phone.
The wall-mounted ipad had been installed by the couple as part of a home automation system, allowing them to access lighting, central heating and the alarm system when not at home.
But after they split up and Cairns moved out, he used his iphone to log into an audio facility on the ipad so he could eavesdrop as Mrs Cairns, a 33-year-old accountant, talked of their crumbling marriage.
On one occasion, after Mrs Cairns told her mother she no longer loved her husband, he turned up unannounced on the doorstep and repeated the conversation she had just had, adding: “Oh, you don’t love me any more.”
The father-of-two also hacked into Mrs Cairns’s accounts on Facebook and Bumble, the dating app, and sent an intimate picture and obscene messages to men she had been chatting with online.
Details emerged as Cairns was convicted of offences of stalking between August and November last year and of using threatening behaviour towards his wife.
Manchester magistrates’ court heard that the couple had been married for 16 years and had two daughters, aged five and three.
Mrs Cairns told the hearing: “He repeated the conversation that I had with my mum. He said ‘oh, you don’t love me any more’. I told him that I would ring the police. I rang his mum to come to get him.”
Mrs Cairns switched off a camera facility on the ipad and brought in an IT engineer to change the password on the system so Cairns could no longer access it – but the court heard he still logged in remotely.
While she was on holiday, she found her Bumble account had been blocked due to “inappropriate content” and discovered an intimate photo had been posted on her profile.
Neil White, prosecuting, said: “They lived in a ‘smart house’. He has been accessing the system when they were living separately and listened in on conversations. We submit that hacking into her phone is stalking.”
Cairns denied wrongdoing, claiming he accessed the system for the lights and TV but not to use it to view or listen in to the house.
Cairns will be sentenced next month.