My 12-yr old son wants to be able to join chat rooms. I am a bit leery. Is there a way to record his chat room activity? He will be aware that I am doing it, but I won’t be reading it unless I have a good reason to do so.
Depends on the program. Most chat programs have some sort of logging capability, either optional or by default. Of course, nothing’s to say that your son won’t figure out either how to disable it, or where the logs are kept, but that’s not the question.
On America Online you can Log Chats. You can either turn on the logging just as you kid goes in, or set the logging to be on all the time.
I use an enhancement software made to shell around AOL called Power Tools. It is excellent, and give great flexibility to the use of AOL. Go to Keyword: BPS to check that out. I don’t mean to push it or sell it, I don’t sell the stuff I just use it.
Anyway, you can set the software of AOL to log all the time- both IM’s and Chat Dialogue. Then later, you can look by name or by date and keep or delete as you wish.
My 11 year old is very eager to be able to IM with his friends. I’m also leery and as of yet have not allowed it. However, he’s not 5 and I have to allow him some freedoms at some point.
Good luck with the kid, look under “My AOL- Preferences- Chat” or somesuch. I can’t find the right sequence right now, PowerTools gives a different set of menu options.
Cartooniverse
Hey Cartooniverse, I am not sure about AOL proper, but I know that with AIM you can block all people that aren’t on your buddy list from chatting with you. So if you keep up with who=who on your son’s buddy list, perhaps it will keep him from being chatted up by kid-stalking strangers. Also, I suppose if you just explain to him how internet strangers can be scary (and icky!) sometimes he will never try to figure out how to turn that option off.
With AIM 4.7, the command for this is:
My AIM -> Edit Options -> Edit Preferences -> Privacy
One other thing…if you use AOL proper you can still use AIM, you just have to create a new name if you want to run both at once.
I actually read about this recently in the Sunday Times (uk). The program they reccomended was called wordwatcher. It actually logs anything that is typed in, not just in chat rooms, and logs what websites are visited etc. It then lets you search for certain keywords in the recorded text. Obviously, it depends whether you are prepared to pay £39.95 for this software. The advantage is, it is more comprehensive than the other options suggested.
*From the website
Might be nice to know if this is a PC or Mac computer. But try download.com they have tons of programs of all types. I bet they have something you can try for a PC for chat logging.
Mirc has the log function mentioned earlier. It includes private messages or “whispers”. All of my logs have always gone directly into my Mirc folder. (In the Options just click the tab marked “logging” and click the boxes for channels and private chats. The logs themselves save under the extention of .log so you can always just do a search on that to see where they go.) Not sure which types of chat rooms you son will want to go to, as some or IRC is pretty scary. Dalnet, for instance, has some awful chatroom names. A lot of chatrooms run through IRC (internet relay chat) but also accessed through the web by java. Talk to the lad and gather as much info as you can about where/what his interests are and please remind him not to share personal information as not everyone in any chatroom is what they claim. If he can access a chatroom via IRC rather than the web, I’d suggest getting an IRC program.
I don’t know what kind of computer you’re using. I know there is ircle for a Mac to access IRC, but I don’t know if it has a logging feature. ICQ logs every conversation in History, but Yahoo IM does not, you have to select to save each chat at the end of each session. I may be wrong about Yahoo IM but I have looked for a log feature and not yet found it. I have not a clue on what AIM does as I’ve never used it.
The monitoring features in powertools for AOL were excellent quite some time ago. I am not a big fan of AOL but the monitoring features of power tools allowed me to catch a cheating SO in 94. If not for that software I would have ended up homeless, she was waiting for me to get paid so she could clean out our joint account. I had logs of all of her chat convo’s telling her new b/f to be of her plans.
There are also a variety of monitor programs which record chats, keystrokes, and capture surfing history.
I’m sure you could find free ones. There are also some out there that do a screen capture every few seconds and save them so you can review them like a time lapse movie of computer activity of all kinds on or offline.
Just be prepared for the results, it can be scary to read what people don’t think you are going to see.