NEW YORK: The age-old business of breaking up has taken a decidedly Orwellian turn, with digital evidence like e-mail messages, traces of Web site visits and mobile telephone records now permeating many contentious divorce cases.

Spurned lovers steal each others BlackBerrys. Suspicious spouses hack into each others e-mail accounts. They load surveillance software onto the family PC, sometimes discovering shocking infidelities.

Divorce lawyers routinely set out to find every bit of private data about their clients adversaries, often hiring investigators with sophisticated digital forensic tools to snoop into household computers.

“In just about every case now, to some extent, there is some electronic evidence,” said Gaetano Ferro, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, who also runs seminars on gathering electronic evidence. “It has completely changed our field.”

Privacy advocates have grown increasingly worried that digital tools are giving governments and corporations the ability to peek into peoples lives as never before. But the real snoops are often closer to home.

“Google and Yahoo may know everything, but they dont really care about you,” said Jacalyn Barnett, a divorce lawyer based in Manhattan. “No one cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married to you.”

Most of these stories do not end amicably. Earlier this year, a technology consultant from the Philadelphia area, who did not want his name used because he has a teenage son, strongly suspected his wife was having an affair. Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program called PC Pandora on her computer. The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites she visited and the instant messages she was sending.

Since the program captured her passwords, the husband was also able to get access to and print all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous year.

What he discovered ended his marriage. For 11 months, he said, she had been seeing another man, the parent of one of their sons classmates at a school outside Philadelphia. The husband said they were not only arranging meetings but also posting explicit photos of themselves on the Web and soliciting sex with other couples.

Being on the receiving end of electronic spying can be particularly disturbing. Jolene Barten-Bolender, a 45-year-old mother of three who lives in Dix Hills, New York, said that she was recently informed by AOL and Google, on the same day, that the passwords had been changed on two e-mail accounts she was using, suggesting that someone had gained access and was reading her messages. Last year, she discovered a Global Positioning System, or GPS, tracking device in a wheel well of the family car. She suspects her husband of 24 years, whom she is divorcing.

Her husband and his lawyer declined to discuss her allegations.

Divorce lawyers say their files are filled with cases like these.

Three-quarters of the cases of Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, involve some kind of electronic communications. She says she routinely asks judges for court orders to seize and copy the hard drives in the computers of her clients spouses.

James Mulvaney, a private investigator, spends much of his time poking through the records of divorcing spouses. One of his specialties is retrieving files, like e-mail to lovers that a spouse has tried to delete. “Every keystroke on your computer is there, forever and ever,” Mulvaney said.

Rally driver Colin McRae and two children - one his five-year-old son - have died in the helicopter crash near his country home, police have confirmed today.

Strathclyde Police said they now know the 39-year-old former world champion, his son Johnny, and two family friends died in the aircraft which burst into flames in Lanark, Scotland, yesterday afternoon.

The other victims were named as six-year-old Ben Porcelli, of Lanark, and Graeme Duncan, 37, who lived in France.

The Twin Squirrel helicopter which McRae owned came down about 4.10pm, bursting into flames and starting a massive fire. It was returning to McRae’s home at Jerviswood from a nearby visit to the village of Quarter when the aircraft got into difficulty, police said.

Chief Superintendent Tim Love, divisional commander of Strathclyde Police’s South Lanarkshire Division, said: “We believe that the group were just returning from a visit to the nearby village of Quarter around 4.05pm yesterday, when it appears that the helicopter got into difficulty and crashed within the grounds of Mr McRae’s family home.

“Our officers are working closely with the Air Accident Investigation Team who are presently at the scene. Family Liaison Officers have been appointed and are with the families to help them through this distressing and difficult time.”

A team of air accident investigators are spending the day at the scene examining the wreckage. Strathclyde Police initially said that the damage was so bad from the accident that they didn’t know how many people were on board. A team of around 40 firefighters were at one point dealing with the fire from the blast.

David Lowry, who owns New Steadings Farm, just across the Mouse Water from McRae’s home, said he saw the helicopter come down. He told Scotland on Sunday: “I was speaking to one of my friends on the farm. The helicopter came overhead and then dropped into the valley.

“After it disappeared I saw smoke rising from the trees and phoned the emergency services. I could not see what happened when it went down.”

Tributes poured in for McRae, who became Britain’s first World Rally Champion in 1995, securing the runners-up spot on a three other occasions. A licensed pilot, he was married to Alison and had another child, Hollie.

David Richards, McRae’s former boss at Subaru where he enjoyed much of his rallying success, said his death was a terrible loss.

He told the BBC: “He had a competitive spirit like I’ve never seen. He was one of those people who had an extraordinary spirit that you just can’t define. It’s a terrible loss.”

Frank Gunning, chairman of Lanark Community Council, said McRae’s death would “throw a blanket” over the town. The rally driver’s family have been established in Lanark for several generations.

Mr Gunning said: “The McRae family were extremely well known. Lanark is not a big place and this is a major, major tragedy for the town.”

Local minister Rev Alison Meikle said the deaths had left an air of disbelief. Asked about the mood among parishioners in Lanark, she told Sky News: “It is one of disbelief and deep upset, deep upset for the family. So our prayers and thoughts are with the families involved at this time.”

McRae’s father, Jimmy, is a five-time British rally champion and his brother, Alister, is also former British rally champion.

Users of the rally champion’s official website «www.colinmcrae.com» were today being greeted by a black screen with no information available.

A three-year-old British girl has been kidnapped at gunpoint in the Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt, the country’s police said today.

The child, named as Margaret Hill, was snatched while waiting in a traffic jam as she was being driven to school, according to a police spokeswoman.

She said the girl was the daughter of a British expatriate oil worker, although the Foreign Office has yet to confirm this.

Kidnappings of foreign oil workers for ransom are very common in Port Harcourt, which is located in the oil-producing Niger delta in southern Nigeria. Abductions of children are rare, although the local media says it is the third case this year.

Since the start of 2006, about 200 adult expatriates have been kidnapped in the Niger delta. Most are released after a few days once a ransom has been paid, but armed groups are still holding 15 hostages.

Criminal gangs are behind most of the kidnappings, but a few of the abductions have been politically motivated.

Nigerian newspapers reported last month that a three-year-old child of a member of the Rivers state house of assembly was kidnapped and later handed back to the family unharmed in exchange for money. There were also reports earlier in the year of another child abduction for ransom.