Washington, Apr 8 : If you’re secretly checking on your partner's text messages and snooping on his or her emails, it seems you're not the only one.

Nearly a quarter of all married couples in Britain have confessed to secretly checking up on their other halves, a new survey has found.

The report by the Oxford University’s Internet Institute found that excessive Internet use can cause friction between married couples.

The survey analyzed people’s online habits and found that more than one in ten people nose around the Internet sites their partners visit.

Although those questioned said the Internet was virtually essential for starting and maintaining a relationship, they did think it could potentially lead to 'online infidelity'.

In the study, the research team questioned over 6012 married couples and showed 97percent disapproved of their partners falling in love with other people on the internet and 85percent were against them flirting online.

Around the same amount were unhappy with their partners discussing personal problems online with other people and or having cyber sex.

Questions included how and where they first met their partners, their Internet use, their online behaviours, and attitudes to these behaviours.

Distrust amongst couples proved relatively high with 20 percent admitting to reading each other's emails and 13 percent checking their internet histories.

“We found it quite surprising how many couples check up on each other online,” the Telegraph quoted research leader, Ellen Helsper, as saying.

However Helsper added: “However snooping on each other was not necessarily about checking to see if your partner was cheating it could also be to keep an eye on their spending.” (ANI)