London - How different life would be for Tiger Woods, Ashley Cole or Kristen Stewart - if they had only known about a new phone app which helps cheating lovers keep their affairs secret.
The Cate app, which stands for “Call and Text Eraser”, creates an invisible log of calls and text messages and can hide specific numbers from the contacts list.
The screen will never indicate who has called and at the touch of a button, all private information can be wiped from the phone forever.
Unlike other apps, the Cate icon does not appear on the home screen and if someone walks in while the cheat is reading their illicit texts, a simple shake of the phone will make it all disappear.
For added confidence, the adulterer has to enter a secret code to access the app and all the hidden features it provides.
Advertised with the slogan, “Love is blind, we keep it that way!”, the smartphone app which costs £3 ($4.99) to download, is the brainchild of Boston entrepreneur Neal Desai.
The 25-year-old student bought the app for £11,000 from a Miami police officer, who developed the program after seeing his friend dragged through the divorce court thanks to incriminating text messages on his phone.
Desai then decided to expand the business by appearing on Shark Tank, the American equivalent of BBC2's Dragon's Den and ended up securing $70,000 (£44,000).
During the pitch he claimed that professional golfer Tiger Woods, who famously cheated numerous times on his wife Elin Norgegren, would actually still be married if he had bought the Cate app.
Since the app was launched three weeks ago, it has been downloaded 10,000 times.
While critics have pointed out the “morality” of his product, Desai insists there are legitimate reasons for using his app, which he says is there to protect someone's privacy.
'It's a privacy app, essentially, and as with every technology that involves privacy, there is good with the bad,” Desai told The Sunday Times.
'But it is also labelled a privacy application and could have uses for government officials, or corporate business, or for lawyers whose entire business is based on keeping things confidential.'
So far, 70 percent of the purchases have been by women.
According to Jay Leopardi, Desai's business partner, that might be because women need to protect themselves from accusatory husbands and boyfriends.
'It could be that women cheat more, or there are lots of bullish men out there who are accusing their girlfriends of cheating when they speak to any other man.'
And while adulterers might think they can now get away with anything, cheaters beware - the app could also be secretly downloaded by a suspicious husband or wife on to their spouse's phone to create an invisible record of calls and texts. - Daily Mail