With a teenage son in the house, I’m considering this software. Is there anything I need to now about this software before making a purchase? Anyone have positive experience with any particular program?
Keylogging software keeps a log of every keystroke input into the computer. So it’s useful for finding out passwords etc. but not so useful for checking, and I’m going out on a limb here, pron surfing. Is that the reason you wanted to snoop on your son?
Why? Usually when I think “keyloggers” I think “malicious viruses/malware that is trying to steal your personal info”, not “wholesome applications for family enjoyment”.
One word
Spector
This software flat rocks, screenshots every 15 seconds, keystrokes, email, chat conversations, sites visited, applications run, site blocking.
I have a customer running it on his office machines. Its like being able to read someones mind.
I’ll second Spector. A friend of mine used in when he suspected his wife was cheating on him (she was). It gave him a lot of damning information that turned out very useful to him. I’d say this post is both 
and :(.
When I was system admin at a big hotel, we had this software for the entire hotel. They are good products, especially if you use encryption 'cause you still get the actual keystrokes
If you just want to frustrate your sons attempts, I have a better solution. Get dial up. Yeah he’ll get through to porn sites and such, but he’ll give up quick after waiting 3 hours to download 10 seconds of porn.
MySpace is about useless with dial up. YouTube isn’t watchable.
BUT anything in text is still usuable. If you don’t watch video, or dowload dial up works. So your kid can still use the internet to read text files (like Wikipeida) and reserach for homework, and quickly he’ll give up trying to get anything “cool.”
Dial-up can be more expensive than Cable/DSL and you can’t use the phone when connected.
I don’t actually believe in reducing the effectiveness of the internet as another poster suggested, but had a similar concern with my teenage daughter. We resolved this by sticking the kids computer in our dining room.
The computer can easily been seen from the lounge room (where the TV is) and it sees a lot of traffic going through to the kitchen. We have had no problems with inappropriate use of the computer since we did this (unless you count every tool bar under the sun and a multitude of twilight desktops regularly installed)
Your situation is one that I have been dealing with for the past couple of years. I have two teenagers at home, and their friends are also frequently over.
I wrote two articles on this subject in recent times: one on using OpenDNS as a weak filtering tool, and the other on creating a second network to have better control over the kids’ Internet access.
In recent times, by having the kids all on a separate network, I was able to set things up to apply some filtering upstream of their network, and I have it on a schedule so they only have a fixed amount of time per day when the Internet is enabled.
A cheap and cheerful way to reduce Internet surprises
Banish the kids to their own network!
Another option that I have used in the past has been to run a Squid proxy server on a spare PC and block all direct access to the Internet from the kids’ machines, forcing them to go through the proxy. This way I was able to capture detailed logs of their surfing and I was able to use a tool called DansGuardian to filter, upstream of their machines, what they could go to.
I don’t have kids, but I was one not *that *long ago, and I’m going to second the “put the computer in a public, high-traffic area of the house” suggestion. AFAIK that worked out great for both my parents–Mom and Dad both had the family computer in the dining room, which opened straight into the living room in both homes.
It may be frustrating, but it won’t make him give up. Some of us were teenagers when dialup was the norm, and compensated appropriately.
This is what I do, but I use Privoxy because of the ability to white-list sites. Privoxy lets me designate some sites as “trusted referrers” and any links clicked from those sites work and are added to the white list – but not as trusted referrers themselves. So if my kid sees a site, it’s because I manually added the site name to a list or because the site was one click away from a site I approved.
So far, he’s been happy surfing all things Pokemon. 
ahh,…but can a average teenager remove the key logger?
hey, trust google ads to teach you something new:
This thread is showing me a big ad for:
“keylogger remover” from a site called pctools dot com
I’ll admit that I’m just an old fogey and hadn’t thought of it, but any kid is more computer-savvy than me. And just like spyware removal programs, there seem to be keylogger removal programs.
Are we old folks doomed to be outsmarted ?
I don’t get how this is a problem. First, the kid’s gotta be aware he’s being spied on, and obviously spyware doesn’t announce its presence as that would defeat the purpose. Second, the parent can treat spyware removal as inherent admission of guilt or rebellion against the rules and whatnot. Third, even if the kid is unusually bright and figures he can remove the spyware, surf for porn, then reinstall the spyware just as it was before, there’s gonna be a big gaping hole in the logs.
Oh, and I agree with **thelurkinghorror **: limiting bandwidth isn’t a solution, and wholly underestimates the average teenager’s craving for porn and/or illegal downloads ;).
Surf for porn… big gaping hole. You put those phrases a little too close together for comfort.
There sure as hell ought to be, and not so much for the sake of “outsmarting old folks”. As noted above, keyloggers are often malicious, unwanted programs that infest a system in an attempt to gain personal info (logins/passwords).
Good articles. As I commented there, one improvement would be to use a completely different private IP address range to make things just that bit more visible.
Great idea about the different IP address range. It would also make it that much easier to keep things straight when doing the configuration.
(Thanks for the post—a change of pace from the daily dose of Russian spammers.)
Do you really care that your son likes porn? Would you confront him about it? These days, that would be considered healthy (normal). I’d understand if you were trying to protect your computer though. Are you clearing your history after your done? If not, it may be easier for him to catch on. If you do clear it, maybe he is trying to be like his mother. Hopefully he is internet smart and knows how to avoid the bad websites and/or downloads.
If you use a keylogger nothing prevents him from using a live linux cd and running the browser from there. I know that’s what I would do if I had access to a PC I didn’t trust.
The exact mechanisms are proprietary, but every install of spector is unique, filenames, file sizes, etc, etc. Since no two installs are alike, they never generate a profile. Even if you do get a virus scanner to pick it up, you can usually create an exception for it in your AV software.
The only way to find out if its running is by pressing a key combination that will pop up a password box. Even the password box has no labeling or branding. Enter the password and you are into the logging application