What Every Parent Needs to Know.
As the internet is still in it s baby stages, it kind of reminds me of the wild west. Sure there are laws out there to protect you from the baddies, but enforcing them are close to impossible. This causes you and me to take the full brunt of what the internet has to offer. There is nothing worng with that, but we all need to know about the dark underbelly of the internet.
It s one thing for an adult to decide what is inapropriate, but children should not have to make that decision. Adult websites are on almost every type of keyword you can search for. Or perhaps your kids are in a chat room and somone posing as a teen is chatting with them, only to find out that teen is actually a 40 year old man trying to make a date with an adolescent. I could go on and on about this kind of stuff, but I think it can be summed up by the following sentence:
The kids may not be looking for it, but it is looking for them.
This is one of the internets biggest flaws. Why it would be this way is beyond me, but I would have to think its because there are laws in place, but there is just not enough enforcement. The sad part is that we have websites for locating pedophiles that live in your neighborhood. There is nothing wrong with that, but it kind of defeats the purpose if you allow them in to your childs bedroom via the internet.
Beleive me it is happening.
When I started to research this subject I decided to keep it simple, I went to google and typed in the following: "Child Internet Monitoring Software" and the first thing that I saw was this:
Spector and eBlaster Spy Software - Internet Monitoring Software.
So, I decided to check it out and it turns out that SpectorSoft has several programs for monitoring internet activity. Not just for kids either, according to SpectorSoft s company profile they develop, market and support PC/Internet monitoring and surveillance products for business, education, government and general home users.
Recognizing that corporations, schools and families need to know how people are using their PCs and what they are doing on the Internet, SpectorSoft was founded to provide the first useful and intuitive recording and playback products for Windows and Mac OS based computers.
Sounds like I am off to a good start, so I dig deeper in to the website and it turns out that one of thier products have been rated as Editor s choice for Best Monitoring Software by PC Magazine in 2002 and 2004. (I researched this and PC magazine has only covered this topic twice, so for one program to be selected both times really says something.)
I decided to purchase the software and give it a try. It was 99.95 for one copy.
SpectorSoft does have a license agreement. You must have a license for each computer that you need to monitor. Luckily for us, they offer discounted pricing based off of the amount of computers that you need to monitor. They also appear to have a strong stance in regards to PC owership. You must own the computer that you need to monitor, if you don t you could be violating local, state, or federal laws. That tells me that this company does not produce your normal run of the mill keylogger.
Download and Install
After the purchase has been made, you are directed to the download, it took me about 3 minutes to download (dial up users will be happy to know it takes about 5 minutes). The install was extremely simple, just enter your serial number and email address for registration, click next a couple of times and its done. You do need to reboot the computer before it starts to record.
The Hunt Begins
After reboot I did not enter the program, I tried to find it. Lets be real, kids are very good with computers and I know that the first thing I would do if I were a kid that thinks their parents are monitoring them, hunt for it and delete/disable it. I ran several common spyware scanners and Anti Virus software such as Ad Aware, Spybot, Norton Internet Security, Mcafee Anti virus, and Norton Anti Virus. The results were nilh.None of them were able to find Spector Pro running. That is absolutley amazing to me, so I started to manualy dig on the computer. I searched the hard drive for anything related to Spector Pro and came up with nothing. I checked services running on my computer and there was nothing there, I even pressed ctrl alt delete and it was nowhere to be found.
Findings
I was astonished by this, so I really thought I goofed the install. I used the hotkeys that I customized during install and used my password to access the application. What happened next? Spector Pro came out of stealth mode and I saw everything i was doing via snapshots.
Snapshots basically take pictures of what ever is on the monitor and you can play it back like you would a movie on a DVD. I click the play button and it showed me everthing when I was trying to find it. It showed me scanning with the spyware, running the Anti Virus software, manually searching for it, everything.
Just the snapshots alone will tell you everything that your kid does, but there is MUCH more.
Spector Pro records emails, chats, instant messages, websites visited, programs launched, files downloaded, peer to peer activity and keystrokes typed. I could not beleive the amount of information it was capable of monitoring, so i decided to exit the program and see what each monitoring tool did.
I went to hotmail and yahoo email, sent emails to a few friends and told them about this software. They replied back and said that it sounded cool. (One of the people I sent an email to has 2 teenagers that think they can get away with anything online.)I then logged back in to Spector pro and clicked the email button. It recorded both, hotmail and yahoo.Spector Pro told me who sent or received it, what time it was sent or recived and the exact content within that specific email.
The same was true with chat and instant messaging. I hopped on AIM and MSN had a few conversations and Spector Pro recorded what I said and what my friends were saying. It is widley known that kids use instant messengers to communicate online than adults do, this tool is without a doubt going to be the most important feature for monitoring your child. Kids will talk about anything and everything through chat. How their day was, what their homework assignment is, who they like, dislike, what kind of drugs they can buy and so on. (Yes, they arrange to purchase drug by having a chat conversation.) You will also know if they are chatting with people that you do not know, such as the 40 year old masking as a teenager tyring to make a date with your daughter.
Just like anyone else that uses strong passowrds for webmail, blogs, forums, and just about anything else that rquires you to login, I felt safe in my comfort zone. I thought my passwords were so strong that nobody would ever be able to crack them. However, Spector Pro has once again proven me wrong. The keylogger built in to the program recorded every single strong password that I use. It also let me know what program i was using when I typed it. Spector Pro time stamps too. What this menas to parents is that if you wanted to log in to a chat program, or a web email that your child uses, you could. Though I do not see how you would need it because Spector Pro records the chats and email. If I were to guess how a parent could use this powerful logging tool, I would say it could prove useful to get the password to a chat program and have a conversation with that 40 year old man posing as a teenager.
Webiste recording is another awsome feature, if your kids are crusing the adult related websites, you are going to know. If they tell you they are reasearching their homework online, you can easily find out if they are, because Spector Pro captures It. This is extremeley useful if you have a kid surfing adult web sites and you want to do something about it, but in a discreet manner because Spector Pro will also block websites that you tell it to. When you block the website in question and the next time they go to it, it will give you the "page can not be displayed" error. Its not just adult websites, you can block any website that you want.
The programs launched section is equally impressive as well. It will tell you exactly what programs your kids are running. A great example of how this can be useful would be when kids say they are doing homework at a specific time, but you notice that in the programs launched section, they were actually playing a video game.
In addition to monitoring and recording, Spector Pro has an advanced warning system that will let you know when a computer being monitored has been used in an inappropriate manner. Spector Pro will be "on alert", and email you instantly whenever a keyword you specify has been located in a website, chat converation, email, word document, etc..
Lets say that you have the word sex as a keyword and your child is chatting with the 40 year old pervert and he asks her for sex. You will be instantly notified that he is doing it.
Conclusion
In closing, if you are a parent at the end of your rope with the kids online activity, Spector Pro is without a doubt the best monitoring software that I have ever had the pleasure of using. I do not know if there is anything else out there, but from what i have learned, there is only one program I need to monitor the kids, that program is Spector Pro.
E Reviews Rating 5 out of 5 stars.
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