In the sepia-toned years, the trust factor of a relationship would only be based on promising the Moon and never looking at another woman. But with the World Wide Web coming into picture, the norms of trust in a relationship too have become wide with several people in a relationship expecting sharing of passwords of their social networking accounts or bank accounts as a symbol of trust and love.

According to a recent survey conducted by security technology provider company McAfee, 66% of Indians surveyed across Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai are comfortable sharing their sensitive data with their partners. However, 85% of them accepted changing their password post a break-up. So, where does the trust vanish?

Societal changes
“Access to information across social platform is fine as far as knowledge is concerned, but just to know who’s seeing whom and the constant urge to inform the world about personal goings-on is what is causing problems. The person-to-person contact has been lost. Today, lives of people revolve around letting people know what they are doing,” says Sociologist, Nandini Sardesai.

Sardesai feels that the cons of access to almost everything online are that several people are not aware of how vulnerable they are to the dangers in the world, “You meet an unknown person online, but when the trust is exploited, it jeopardises everything.”

The psychological impact
“When a person in a relationship wants to know the password of the other’s account, it is an indicator of lack of transparency, if the person really trusts the other, there wouldn’t be a question of asking for it. Also, the number of social networking site users is going up today, but the age for being in a relationship has gone down. So, there is a definite rise in the number of cases where knowing details about the partner’s account has led to causing problems in relationship,” says Dr Anjali Chhabria, Consultant Psychiatrist.