Britons are a nation of spies, rifling through their partners' text messages, tapping phone conversations and even tailing loved ones with webcams and satellite navigation systems, a survey reveals.

The most favoured way of keeping tabs on a partner is checking their text messages, with more than half (53 per cent) of those questioned admitting sneaking a peek. The number shoots up to 77 per cent in the 25 to 34 age group.

The second most popular way of finding out if a partner has been a love-cheat is to read their e-mails - 42 per cent told the UK Undercover Survey that they had carried out such a ploy.

The third is the old-fashioned one of rummaging through a partner's pockets, (39 per cent), a technique popular with women.

Men prefer to break another unspoken rule - reading a partner's diary.

Neither is the spoken word safe from eavesdropping.

About one in three (31 per cent) of those questioned in the survey, commissioned by the Science Museum in London, for its Science of Spying exhibition, said they covertly listened in on their partner's conversations.

A small number of the 1,129 people questioned said they had even secretly recorded their partner's telephone conversations, using dictaphones or other such taping devices.