SMU graduate Ashley Rich was weeks away from walking down the aisle when she quickly and quietly called off her six-month engagement to a man she had known since the third grade.

She and her fiance had everything planned, from the wedding colors and flower arrangements to the hotel and flight reservations for their honeymoon in Italy. They had even purchased a house together in Tulsa, Okla., where they were planning to start their married lives.

It all came crashing down one Friday in April, however, when she read an e-mail sent to her fiance from his father. The father expressed delight that his son was marrying someone with money.

Somewhat putoff and suspicious after reading the e-mail, Rich went to a local jeweler to have her engagement ring appraised. What she thought was an expensive diamond was in fact a cheap knock-off.

“He turned out not to be the person I thought he was,” Rich said. “He was a liar.”

Rich is not the only person in today’s world to use technology for a deeper insight into a significant other.

With social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and global search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, all you need is a name to find out more about a person.

“Spying on significant others is not a new behavior; however, the technology available now allows for more intrusions, both because we put more out there in what potentially may be public view and because we’ve learned how to access it,” SMU sociology professor Karen de Olivares wrote in an e-mail interview.

Rachel Potter, an SMU graduate student, works at Raytheon Company, a U.S. military contractor. Because she has a Facebook account, Potter’s employers have her research potential recruits.

“You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff people put on their Facebook profiles,” she said. “People post the most revealing photos.”

In one instance, she said, a recruit posted nude photos of herself.

Facebook profiles and MySpace profiles offer an abundance of information. Even with optional security settings for different levels of privacy, once people have friended you, they can check out your photos, read about your interests and see what other people have posted on your “wall,” the main page of a person’s profile on the networking sites.

While it is common practice among businesses to check the backgrounds of current and future employees, more people are also using the wealth of knowledge available at their fingertips to background the person they are dating.

According to dating service It’s Just Lunch, a survey of 1,167 people revealed that 43 percent search their date’s name on Google before going out for the first time.

For example, if you type in this writer’s name on Google, six results are displayed. Three are bylines from journalism articles, one is a student Web site, another is a blog and the last includes private school all-state swimming records.

People can take it one step further. Public records and background checks are also available online, sometimes for a small fee. You can be your own private investigator and find if someone you know is a criminal, sexual offender, divorced or bankrupt. There are also sites that allow you to check the property value of someone’s house or see if he or she voted in the last election.

“Humans are curious,” wrote de Olivares. “Where and when this crosses the line may be a bit difficult to define; for each person that could be slightly different.”

Patrick Webb, 23, who lives in Grapevine, said his girlfriend has gone so far as to log on to his MySpace account to check his messages.

“She gets jealous easily,” he said. “She deletes messages from friends who are girls so I don’t get them.”

His girlfriend also keeps tabs on his phone.

“She sometimes scrolls through my phone history,” Patrick said.

Like the messages on MySpace, she deletes voice messages from people she doesn’t like him communicating with.

“Sometimes the desire ‘to know’ takes constructive forms,” wrote de Olivares. “We want to learn more about the world around us so we ask questions, read books and conduct research.”

Two years later, Ashley Rich has fallen in love and entered an engagement with someone new. This doesn’t mean, however, she isn’t keeping her eyes peeled.

“I was scared to enter into another engagement,” she said. “But this time I won’t be as naive.”