monitoring internet activity (kids)

Anyone have a suggestion for software to ‘shadow’ internet & email activity? Free downloads, or otherwise??

Thanks in advance IDA!
John

http://www.realvnc.com/products/free/4.1/download.html

If you have a home network you can log into their computer and sit and watch if you want. This also allows you to take over their computer, i.e. take over their mouse.

I highly reccomend every possible measure you can take. Everyone with kids NEEDS to monitor what is going on. I am a police officer and we did an internet sting posing as juveniles on the computer. Some of these guys drove hours through a snowstorm to get here, and some of the local people we arrested talked to us for as little as four to five minutes and they were on their way to meet us. These people are sick, and will say and do anything to get to meet. DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN, THESE THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOODS AS WELL. Sorry to ramble, I can’t offer any suggestions on software, but just being watchful and nosy as you can with your children on the internet is the best defense, couple that with software, and you will definately reduce the risks.

kpd~
No need to be sorry for rambling cause a guy from your occupational field knows first hand what is happening out there and how these perves are invading our homes via the internet. To top it off these people are not only attacking the children but also your bank accounts any info they can pry out of our kids over the internet they can and do use to there advantage..
I have two boys and my oldest has gotten into some pretty nasty stuff online. Needless to say he does not get on much anymore cause I get tired of standing behind him watching each and every move he makes. 15 years old and being babysat by dad during any school project involving the internet….

kpd – thanks for the info (& remember reading & hearing the news – keep up the great job)….exactly why we are concerned. Fully trust our kids, but there are a TON of bizarre individuals looking to take advantage of the innocent.

Any other remcommendations for software?

Thank you.
John
[email protected]

Net nanny software is pretty good. It is about 3 to 4 bucks a month. Here is the link. You can download a limited free trial version for awhile.

Also, keep your kids off of “my-space” and “yahoo-games”. Those two places need to be nuked and destroyed!

I don’t know if those links attached above will stop that browsing or not of those two places.

My kids use a program called “Trillian” for Instant Messaging with their friends. This works with Microsoft Windows Messenger, Windows Messenger Live, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, and many others. All conversations regardless who initiated, everything they read or typed to their friends are logged into a text file. I copy these files to my computer and review them without their knowledge.

If you are interested in the Sites they visit, Internet Explorer has history of all the places they’ve been. The only catch is to make back up copies of the historical information without their knowledge. You can setup an automated batch job that would execute at pre-determine time and make back up copies for save keeping. Kids are smart and they will clear Internet Explorer history before they log off.

If they are using Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook, you can make backup copies of their files. That’s what we do with our corporate computers. I make backup of these files and recover my Emails when they replace my laptop or when my hard disk crash. I burn my work files to CD/DVD. If the kids are using hotmail, yahoo mail, or other internet base emails, it’s very hard as the information is not on their computer. The only thing you can do is hack their password and log in as them. There are utilities that you execute to reveal cached passwords and personal accounts.

The easiest way is to use Net Nanny or other Parental Control programs. Most of these are pretty easy to install and configure. They have built in filters and can limit the internet access.

This is a very important topic. Since the IT field is my profession I am involved with security on a daily basis. I also have a 16 and 14 year old step kids that each have their own computer.

I do not run any software on the computers however I do stress to them the importance of what they are doing. Fortunately I know where to look and I typically know what the most popular things kids are doing.

Two pieces of software I know people have used are NetNanny and CyberPatrol. Where I work, I use a very expensive program (for the average user) called SpectorSoft which monitors EVERYTHING users do on their computer. Every click, which windows are active, and how many clicks, etc…

I do see that spectorsoft has parental software but I am not familiar with it. Let me tell you, spectorsoft (the version I use at my office) is a wonderful program.

If anyone ever has any questions, please use me as a resource, I will give as much knowledge as I have regarding this or anything with technology.

I also have young children (14 year old son and 11 year old daughter). As parents, we have to be at least 2 steps ahead of them. For more information, please read the following information. Go to these links and search on this information for more details. This may you understand our options as parents.

For information on 3rd party internet filter reviews, you may go to http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/. Go to http://www.google.com/ and search on (Computer “Parental Control”). You will gain more knowledge on our options as parents.

Yes, I too work in the IT field and can offer my assistance. If you are interested in writing those scripts, I can post them here. Let me know and I will gladly help.

Gentleman – great info….our kids are younger (oldest is 11) and as you mentioned MyThai – I want to be two steps ahead of them & learn about our options. I’ve already blocked a few sites we’re not comfortable with and will continue to do so as time goes on.

Is the auto backup an easy setup?

Thanks again for the advice
John

To configure automatic backup, you must have two items. You must have a task scheduler and a batch file or a script to perform specific tasks.

To create a schedule tasks in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308569 or http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305613. These links will explain with step by step directions.

Here is an example of a batch file called “backup.bat”. You will notice that I am using “xcopy” command. I am making backup copies of my Desktop Icons, My Local Outlook Personal Data, and My Internet Favorites.

1. @echo off
2. echo.
3. echo Backing up Desktop Icons
4. xcopy “C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\Desktop” “D:\Backup\Desktop” /S /I /Q /K /Y
5. echo.
6. echo Backing up Local Outlook PST
7. xcopy “C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook” “D:\Backup\Outlook” /S /I /Q /K /Y
8. echo.
9. echo Backing up Internet Favorites
10. xcopy “C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\Favorites” “D:\Backup\Favorites” /S /I /Q /K /Y
11. echo.
12. pause

hey MyThai,

can you make that also for like pictures and downloaded music? I was hoping for pictures so that we don’t loose ones of the kids, I have been doing it to disk, but it takes a long time to do that.

shane

Hi Tracking Bass,

Yes, you can do this to any files on your computer. For instance, my personal picture files are stored in “C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\My Documents\My Pictures”. My music files are stored in “C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\My Music”.

The “backup.bat” file would look like this.

1. @echo off
2. echo.
3. echo Backing up Pictures
4. xcopy “C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\My Documents\My Pictures” “D:\Backup\Pictures” /S /I /Q /K /Y
5. echo.
6. echo Backing up Music
7. xcopy “C:\Documents and Settings\Charlie\My Documents\My Music” “D:\Backup\Music” /S /I /Q /K /Y
8. echo.
9. pause

We are using the “XCOPY” command which comes with our computers. We can adapt this to work for anything on our computer. The syntax for XCOPY is provided below.

XCOPY source [destination] [/S] [/I] [/Q] [/K] [/Y]
/S = Copies directories and subdirectories except empty ones.
/I = If destination does not exist, assumes that destination must be a directory.
/Q = Does not display file names while copying.
/K = Copy attributes.
/Y = Suppresses prompting to confirm overwrite of an existing destination file.

Full XCOPY Syntax can be found here http://www.computerhope.com/xcopyhlp.htm Let me know if I could be of further help.

cool, thanks, I will have to check that out. I have a degree in IT/Networking, but mostly all setting up and installing hardware. got just over 1 year of feild experience, just not used to writing this code stuff for back ups and stuff like that.

shane