There are times you need to know the details of activity on a computer. You need to know if your kids are having sexually explicit chat conversations with strangers. You need to know if your spouse is carrying on. You need to know your roommate’s World of Warcraft account password so you can pillage his gold.

OK…so the last example is a BAD use of spy software, but the previous examples show that there are times when it is appropriate to use what is known as a ‘keylogger’.

A keylogger records every keystroke entered in and allows the person doing the monitoring to review what was being said, what programs were run, etc.

For example, IamBigBrother will allow a user to monitor on-line chats, see what screenshots were captured, store passwords to emails such as Yahoo and Gmail, and more. And this software in particular (unlike many spyware programs), won’t show up in the Task Manager, and doesn’t leave the tell-tale lag that other spyware programs do.

Let me share my opinion on the ethical line for using software like IamBigBrother. Personally, using it on kids is fine, but I let mine know that I monitor the computer usage. I’m not trying to be sneaky with my kids (they’d hate that). Rather, I let them know that there are some bad folks out there and I need a way to keep them at bay. My brother recently went to a presentation by local police that talked about how fast on-line chat conversations turn sexual, even though the person on the other end knows (or thinks) that they are chatting with a child or teen.
Using it on a spouse seems shady to me. If you’re in a position where you think your spouse is fooling around and you need to ‘gather evidence’…you’ve already got enough issues in your marriage to warrant a trip to the marriage counselor. (Obviously trust is violated, whether there was any documentable proof or not.) The exception to this is when real damage could be done (ie: to the kids, or serious financial impact). Then you may be beyond counseling and in need of protecting yourself.

Using it on a roommate just to gain power, or access their files, game accounts, etc., is unethical. You are using it solely for your own gain, at the expense of another.

There are a host of spyware and keyloggers out there (though personally IamBigBrother is my favorite). Just make sure you are using them for GOOD, like protecting your kids.