Looking at these threads, lots of amazing ways to spy, but all seem to need access to an unlocked phone. The phone in question is an iphone 4 and has a 4 digit password, which locks you out after 6 attempts. Any ideas how to get round that??

maybe a micro video camera in places she is most likely to enter her 4 digit passcode.

Snooping while not arising the suspicions of your target is very important...ESPECIALLY in your case where the events may not be happening TODAY but stuff that happened last winter and last fall may still be being discussed and discoverable. Snooping for OLD information is much more delicate because if the target get suspicious at all...they simply shut down ANY communication about what happened.

Getting the truth about your life through snooping is sometimes the only way to save a marriage. Sometimes there is such overwhelming deciept and dishonesty that the wayward becomes stuck and hopeless feeling. They can't bear telling the truth as they are convinced that the betrayed spouse won't want them and/or the betrayed spouse will tell everyone. Even though the affair may be over...the continued lies prevent any recovery whatsoever.

Snoop the truth and, IF YOU CHOOSE, rebuild from an honest starting point. Otherwise your recovery is built on an unstable foundation and just won't work.

Mr. Wondering

p.s. - a truly repentant former wayward spouse, like mine, will one day thank you for doing what you had to do to save her and your family. If she's not thankful...she's not worth recovering with anyway.

If it's running an older version of iOS, it was possible to bypass the lock screen and see the call logs, contacts, and voice mails. http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/27/bypass-the-iphone-passcode/

Thanks but it is the new version of iOS and this trick does not work

Can you get ahold of the cell phone bills?

cell phone bills are online and in password protected account. Account is registered to her credit card.
she keeps the phone with her all the time, even in bed!

Well...she could accidentally lose her phone one night while sleeping. It's so easy to misplace those things.

But get the passcode FIRST as that's easier than hacking the phone.

If that's not possible...use a keylogger to hack her online password to her cellphone bill. Then you get into her account and reset the account password, email and the phone's password (they might text the phone to alert a change and they may also send an email to the old email that you'll need to access her email to delete).

It's convoluted but if cover all the bases it's doable. Getting the passcode is certainly safer (legally) than accessing the online account and making changes to it which are trackable to an IP address.

Mr. W

OK I have found thatif you plug a locked iphone 4 into a PC running itunes it synchs automatically without needing the phone to be unlocked. But I don't know what data is backed up and cant find a directory on the computer which seems to have the backup. I'm running windows 7.
Any ideas anyone?

Did you check the iPhone help thread that SusieQ started, I posted some stuff in there for recovering information from the iPhone backups.