Have Kids? Try a Keylogger

[didymus]

A propos of all our discussion of Myspace and othe online dangers:

tinyurl.com/yhkc9p

Have Kids? Try a Keylogger

**Tools and advice for keeping children safe online, plus a new natural-language search engine.**

 	**Steve Bass**

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 12:00 AM PST

It must be agonizing to have kids who use the Web. A friend called and asked what I’d recommend to keep an eye on the Internet access of her five kids. Four of the kids are girls; the oldest is about 16 and spending lots of time in chat rooms.

	You've probably guessed I abhor programs that spy on users--but Mom and Dad really need to know what's cooking online.

Hello Spector Pro

	SpectorSoft's [Spector Pro](http://www.spectorsoft.com/products/SpectorPro_Windows/) costs $100 and I was stunned by how efficient it is at tracking everything--and I mean everything--a user does. It works in the background and unless you're really PC savvy, you won't even see it. Even if you do find it, you can't access the setup without a password.

Here is a free keylogger if you can’t afford the above.

 

[Meggie]

and make one mistake downloading or get a virus and EVERYONE has privy to that informatio

If you’re so susupcious of your kids you think they need a keylogger and think they are tech-savy enough to bypas all other efforts than they probably are smart enough to use other computers for things.

 

[Dandelion_Wine]

I used something like that once on my machine at home. We had a relative that wanted to use our computer to plan his proposal to his girlfriend - research ideas, etc.

Well I notice the Yahoo Chat install on my desktop and started poking around. I found some pretty distrubing things. I spoke w/ the IT guy at the company I was working for and he gave me some program that would take a snapshot of the screen every 30 seconds. It also had a key logger.

Let’s just say that he wasn’t using my computer to plan any proposal.

 

[Timidity]

Keyloggers are no replacement for parental supervision. If you think your kid is doing something bad on the computer, just look over his shoulder!

 

[didymus]

Keyloggers are no replacement for parental supervision.

I’m suggesting it as a tool for parental supervision, not a substitue.

If you think your kid is doing something bad on the computer, just look over his shoulder!

Well s/he obviously is not going to do the same thing with POS as when you are not looking.

 

[Timidity]

didymus:
Well s/he obviously is not going to do the same thing with POS as when you are not looking.That’s my point. The computer should be right next to the parent.

 

[AlegreFe]

I’m suggesting it as a tool for parental supervision, not a substitue.
Well s/he obviously is not going to do the same thing with POS as when you are not looking.

The computer should be out in the open in a nuetral room where normally everyone in the family is gathered. Families do still gather together in the evening right? If a kid knows that a parent can come over any time to look over his/her shoulder then it’s less likely that he/she will do anything that they think would be against your will.

I have parental controls on my computer. Chat rooms are blocked and the instant messenger is limited on my computer for my child. My child’s Email is also limited to only the people on the list. I can add or delete names on her email list from my signon. No matter what my child does when signed on her name, she cannot add to her own Email list; it won’t even let her. I have to do it from my own signon. I love it! The great thing is that she has no complaints. At least not yet and I pray that she won’t any time soon, like the next 4 or 5 years.

 

[Shellie]

Spector Pro looks like a great option.

Not all parents agree that the one (I’ve got five) computer should only be in a public room. There is more than one way to parent this issue.

Blessings to all the parents out there as we navigate these high-tech waters.

 

[JezuUfamTobie]

I think a keylogger is a great idea. My child is just a baby, but when I have older kids I plan on both having the computer in a main room and using a keylogger or some other monitoring program. I think it’s important to be able to verify whether my suspicions are correct if I suspect inappropriate computer use. Pornography is so incredibly damaging. If (God forbid!) my son ever chose to look at it, I’d want to know right away so I can intervene.

 

[turboEDvo]

Just thought I’d throw in that key loggers are easy to disable and easy to spoof. By the time I was 12 I could disable any key logger I found, and then edit the logs to look like it had been running the whole time. So, any kid with 2 bits of common sense and 10 minutes of spare time can figure out how to do it. Just to warn anyone who thinks keyloggers are a good method of supervision.

If you are worried about or other questionable content, I’d recommend getting a router (for example, Linksys WRT54GS for one) that has a content watch built into the firmware. I think you have to pay a couple bucks a month for the service, but these services are much more difficult to spoof, and the only way to disable a router-based system (unlike a system installed on a particular computer) is to know the password used on the content watch account or know the password to access the router and change settings.

It is much trickier.

Your other alternative is to get a program that monitors the history of the web browser (using the history built into the web browser is not secure). This makes more sense than the keylogger, because if you have ever tried reading the output of a keylogger, you know it is a headache. Web history monitoring tools simply show you the site name of all the sites visited, as well as whether any pages were accessed from there. So, for example, if a porn site shows up in the history, but there are no pages listed under it, then it is likely the user clicked a link that redirected them to a porn site, at which point they closed the window. If there are a bunch of sites under the initial link, then you know they were browsing.

Eamon

 

[rayne89]

Wouldn’t a keylogger log any passwords or credit card numbers typed? Wouldn’t someone be able to hack into your and retrieve this information? Not a computer wiz just asking.

 

[turboEDvo]

Wouldn’t a keylogger log any passwords or credit card numbers typed? Wouldn’t someone be able to hack into your and retrieve this information? Not a computer wiz just asking.

Yes. You would have the option of turning it off when you used the computer, but often people will forget. I don’t know that it is the easiest way to steal a credit card number, but all of the info would definitely be containined in one easy text document, and viola, some theif goes on a shopping spree.

Eamon

 

[Mirdath]

Wouldn’t a keylogger log any passwords or credit card numbers typed? Wouldn’t someone be able to hack into your and retrieve this information? Not a computer wiz just asking.

The answers are ‘yes’ and ‘yes, but it’s very unlikely and more trouble than it’s worth’ respectively. To get your private information someone would have to specifically target your computer, get into it, find the log file, and scan through it for something that looks like a username/password combination, a credit card number, or what have you. It’d be possible to automate some of that scanning, but it would still require a lot of human work on the part of the cracker*. Unless someone is seriously out to get you and you specifically, it’s not something to be worried about. It’s far easier and less effort-intensive to ‘sniff’ the information packets being sent back and forth online for private info.

• I’m going to be a little pedantic here. A hacker is someone who is extremely knowledgeable and talented with computers and who uses those gifts to the greatest extent possible. A cracker is someone who knows a little to a lot about computer systems and uses that knowledge maliciously. When the media get all hysterical about the evil hackers stealing your credit card number, they are talking about crackers. It’s a misnomer that gives actual hackers no end of grief

 

[wjp984]

The computer should be out in the open in a nuetral room where normally everyone in the family is gathered. Families do still gather together in the evening right? If a kid knows that a parent can come over any time to look over his/her shoulder then it’s less likely that he/she will do anything that they think would be against your will.

Nope. Most of us all have our own computers in our own rooms and our own tvs and everything else to shut us up and keep us busy. My family says people that have nice familes like that and stuff like that are extinct. I disagree but they are very rare.

 

[didymus]

Yes. You would have the option of turning it off when you used the computer, but often people will forget. I don’t know that it is the easiest way to steal a credit card number, but all of the info would definitely be containined in one easy text document, and viola, some theif goes on a shopping spree.

Eamon

If you and your kids have separate user accts you can enable the keylogger for theirs but not for yours – I assume that they are not entering credit card #'s.

 

[lizaanne]

Something interesting I learned from a co-worker with teen-aged girls -

The one daughter was banned from MySpace for whatever reason for one month. She was being very good about it, parents were keeping in eye on her pc activity, and using a monitor to keep track of where she was going. They saw that she was researching some college websites and were so proud until they found that one college had a link to MySpace that got her in through a back door!! They were, to say the least, furious. The computer was removed from the house after a very direct discussion about lying and deception.

~Liza

 

[Milliardo]

Keylogging is actually a no-no; it can be abused, as privacy is compromised. The same program you use to spy on your kids might be turned to spy on you by your kids. Don’t get burned.