We lie constantly and it is inevitable. What no one predicted is that new technologies would bring an increase in deception. While face-to-face conversations offer valuable context such as: the variation of the tone of the voice, facial expressions and hand gestures with which we can interpret the intentions of the other person, digital communications allow to hide these actions to determine if the person is he lying or not.

Some people have become masters of lies. They know how to compose their messages to make them sound true, explains Tom Meservy, a professor at Brigham Young University.

A study carried out by Meservy, was that a hundred university students responded to a questionnaire by computer. Half of your answers should be false, so the researchers will check for patterns in the lies. And there were: the lies included a lot of short words, took 10% longer to compose, and were edited multiple times during the process. In terms of Whatsapp, those messages written with a lie went from 'writing' to 'online' and so on, which betray falsehood or discomfort in the sender.

To determine the commonalities of insincere messages, here are the details to watch out for when you suspect they are being insincere with you:

Gets tangled up with many words

To justify himself, a liar feels the need to excuse himself with more words. If the person who responds to you does so with emphasis, with a short sentence, his answer probably corresponds to reality; but if he lingers in impossible sentences, he is most likely lying to you.

Evasive, evasive and more evasive.

Under conditional texts such as 'surely', 'maybe' or 'possibly'. Liars try not to lock themselves in with phrases that are too clear or that link them to a specific opinion and, therefore, their responses consist of words that leave the door open to free interpretations.

Quickly change the subject

This is another very reliable indicator; no one is comfortable in lying and, therefore, tries to divert attention as soon as he has a chance. Therefore, if you notice that before you have closed the topic he interrupts you with another question or with a radical change of topic, be clear: he is lying to you.

It takes life to answer

Bad business. He's thinking about it. He is mulling over the issue not to commit, to get out of this alive. Taking into account that most of us don't take too long to respond to any message, unless they are busy, but if you find that when faced with a potentially uncomfortable question, their speed in responding varies, again, be suspicious.

Hunch, intuition, sixth sense.

Call it what you want, but you know it works and it puts you on the trail of liars.

Finally we give you two examples of the "typical" messages of a liar and how to find out:

"I just read the message"

 A classic, how many times has a contact told you that?: "Sorry, I just read your message", and it turns out that the double blue check is there indicating that the message we have sent has been received, opened and read . The application has a function that tells you exactly how long ago that message of yours was read. And it is that Whatsapp has a hidden information screen that reveals this particular data to you. To find it, we must do the following: We open the chat window and look for the message that interests us in the conversation with the contact; we hold that message down until a series of icons appears at the top in the case of Android and iPhone slides the message to the left.

"I'm here; I'll be here in 10 minutes"

Another classic, that of being waiting in a place and that the person you have met does not show up at the agreed time is tedious. To do this, Whatsapp allows you to activate a function to send a contact the exact location where the other person is, and follow him in real time. You just have to open a chat, press the clipboard icon that is right in the text bar, and select from the options the one that says “real-time location”. And voila, so you will know if your contact is lying to you or not.