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SpectorSoft SpectorSoft Spector Pro 6.0 - LiteratureMonitors and records every detail of PC and Internet use
September 2007 Readers Digest September 2007 In an article titled "Is Your Boss Spying on You? It's legal, it's happening and it can get you fired." Readers' Digest writer Kim Zetter discusses how more and more employers are monitoring PCs to protect themselves against lawsuits such as sexual harassment and copyright-infringement, as well as to increase their security posture and employee productivity. The article opens with the story of Ismael Rodriguez who is a network analyst for Copier Country, a small New York company that sells photocopiers. According to Zetter, "A few years ago, after a salesman took the firm's customer database when he left for a new job, Rodriguez installed a program called Spector Pro on most of the company's computers. The software, made by SpectorSoft, can track and block the websites a user tries to visit and log his or her every keystroke. According to Rodriguez, "I can see screen shots of what they do in Yahoo!," he says. "I can see what they're typing, whether it's résumés or business-related stuff. The program even keeps track of songs that employees download to their iPod. There's not anything these guys can get away with that I can't see."
Good Housekeeping In its March 2007 article entitled "Do You Know Where Your Kids Are", SpectorSoft's remote Internet monitoring software called eBlaster was featured in Good Housekeeping Magazine. Several parents who use eBlaster to monitor their children's Internet activities are quoted in the article and refer to how eBlaster has alerted them to dangerous instant messages, web sites and postings of inappropriate pictures of their children online. February 6, 2007 Laura Ingraham Cyber Bully expert/researcher Dr. Justin Patchin talks about the importance of using SpectorSoft software Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D. For more information about Dr. Patchin and his work regarding cyberbulling, please visit: http://www.cyberbullying.us/
PC World SpectorSoft's Spector Pro 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. The program recorded everything I did on the computer, and even took snapshots of the screen. Afterwards, I could review everything. Heck, I watched a video and Spector Pro recorded it, too--I was able to see the desktop and media player showing the video. There's even a tab that reports on MySpace activity; with all those kids, it should be useful. Another way to use Spector Pro is to see what Web sites users were on, and to review their actions to learn how and when they might have picked up spyware. The setup also lets you block access in a number of ways, including by time, application, and Web sites.
SmartMoney That shouldn't come as a surprise. Employees have come to expect that their company keeps track of the web sites they visit and the emails they send. Internet monitoring doesn't end with going through email and a list of visited web sites. Now, thanks to software programs like SpectorSoft, employers can record practically everything employees do on their computers and watch it as if on videotape, says Jay Mellon, vice president at AtNetPlus, a Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio-based IT security consultancy. It's a fairly common practice. More than a third (36%) of the companies surveyed by AMA, for example, said they monitor web activity by using keystroke-tracking software, which can also monitor the time spent at the keyboard. These companies not only know what you wrote in an email, but also how long it took you to write it. They can access it even if you never sent it.
US News & World Report It was with some hesitation that I tried Spector Pro as part of a look at tools for parents concerned about their kids' activities on social networking sites. A new version, Spector Pro 6.0, is due out this week. And say what you will about the wisdom of surveillance software, this is one slick piece of technology. It loads smoothly and is easy to hide, if you choose to keep your spying a secret. Then it monitors everything that happens on the PC. Perhaps most impressive are the snapshots of what transpired on that machine--frequent screen grabs that you later review as a sort of slide show. The latest version is smarter, relying more on actions, such as a mouse click or an application opening, instead of just grabbing periodic images. But wading through days, or weeks, of snapshots can be tough. So the new version adds "top 10" summary reports of, say, who the teen was instant messaging with and when. If there's a red flag, you can go to the snapshots. And it's set up to specifically monitor MySpace activities, including the site's chat program.
The Wall Street Journal Children's Internet use has become a major concern for working parents, says Rich Chaifetz, CEO of ComPsych, Chicago, an employee-assistance provider. More than one-fourth of parents cite worries about kids' spending too much time online as the top summer child-care fear, in a recent ComPsych survey of 677 working parents. A growing number of parents are using consumer software to monitor their kids' home Internet use from work. Parents say they gain invaluable information about their children, plus the power to control what they do online. April 2005 About.com Guide Rating - "Spector Pro rocks - plain and simple!" -Tony Bradley Cream Of The Crop PC Magazine recently awarded its Editor's Choice award to Spector Pro as the Best Monitoring Software for the 2nd time. Spector Pro is the world's best selling monitoring and surveillance software and version 5.0 sets the bar even higher for competition to strive for. Spector Pro contains seven integrated tools that record virtually every minute detail and action on a computer- chat sessions, instant messages, emails sent and received, web sites visited, keystrokes typed, programs launched and peer to peer file searching and swapping. With 5.0 Spector Pro adds Snapshot Recording which takes actual snapshots of the screen at set intervals that can be played back as a sort of graphic image surveillance video to show you exactly what was on the screen at a given time or what actions were taken in what sequence. Not only does Spector Pro 5.0 monitor and record all of these activities, but it does it in stealth mode so that users on the computer can't even tell the software is installed. SpectorSoft more or less defines the market for this type of software. If you want to monitor children, employees or even your own computer Spector Pro 5.0 is the best of the best. December 28, 2004 Houston Chronicle The Houston Chronicle looks at the increasing threat to minors who communicate unsupervised with strangers via the Internet - and recommends Spector Pro to aid concerned parents: No doubt, many parents anxiously read about the 12-year-old Channelview girl who was missing for four days after arranging to meet a man she'd chatted with on the Internet. Even more alarming, an FBI official said cases of Houston area minors being lured away by online "friends" have been increasing, to over one a week. But once the shock and concern about the latest news pass, the temptation may be to file away the subject of Internet predators under the heading of denial ("It couldn't happen my child") or helpless hand-wringing ("What's a mother to do?"). It's true, no preventive measures can absolutely guarantee safety, in the real world or the virtual one. December 24, 2004 Sydney Morning Herald The Sydney Morning Herald reviews Spector Professional Edition.
PC Magazine - Editors' Choice Spector Pro was awarded PC Magazine Editors' Choice for the 2nd time (originally awarded in July 2002). Here is what they had to say: "Spector Pro 5.0 is the best choice. Logging the user's every keystroke and taking frequent screen grabs, the progam is simple enough to use and offers the most powerful and complete assortment of monitoring and reporting features among the tools we've tested. It is also the only monitoring application we looked at that offers time management features."
InfoWorld "Being nosy can be good for business. Although workplace privacy has become a hot-button issue for many unions and employee-rights groups, there are many legitimate reasons for an organization to want to know what's happening on its computers. From industrial espionage, to sabotage, and workplace harassment suits, it's not hard to understand the strong financial incentives that may exist for keeping tabs on employees' workstations. SpectorSoft offers a pair of products that allow an IT department to observe virtually all activity on individual workstations. Spector Professional Edition and e-Blaster 3.0 are separate solutions to a common problem. Each offers an inexpensive way to monitor the actions and data running through a computer's keyboard and screen." April 25, 2003 The Washington Times "If all is fair in love and war, cyberspace is becoming a new battleground. People aren't using the Internet just to find love anymore; they're using it to catch wayward lovers. With a little bit of creativity and, on occasion, some moderately priced software, suspicious partners can become their own private investigators or, more simply put, e-mail spies." The Washington Times examines how Spector Pro and eBlaster are helping spouses take control of their relationships by learning the truth... "They find e-mails; they find an adulterous relationship. People are getting really good at searching where people have been on the Internet."
AM Canada
A SpectorSoft customer discusses how she uses Spector Pro to monitor her teenage daughters online activity.
The Wall Street Journal
NBC Today Show Spectorsoft products eBlaster and Spector Pro are discussed on the Today Show as Internet Monitoring products that help parents protect their children online. January 9, 2003
"There are times when 'you need a cast-iron stomach to let some things go by, especially when it's about you,' says Don McDevitt, a parent in North Wales, Pa., who uses a program called Spector Pro, which records what a child does on the Internet the way a VCR records television programs. Mr. McDevitt installed the software -- and discovered that his teenage son was using marijuana. He also learned that one friend of his teenage daughter was e-mailing around inappropriate photos of herself. He had a talk with both his kids, and put that kind of behavior to an end. He says his children still aren't entirely clear on how he came to know what was going on: 'My kids think I'm clairvoyant.'"
MSNBC "Your employer probably knows if you make a bid on eBay, check your bank account, book airline tickets, e-mail a friend or send instant messages to co-workers. They probably know how often and for how long you surf the Internet and what keys you type in Microsoft Word and other software programs. That's right, employers are increasingly monitoring employees with a handful of "spyware" programs. Vero Beach, Fla.-based SpectorSoft Corp. has two software programs - eBlaster and Spector Pro - available for companies to monitor employees or parents to monitor their children's computer activities. Spector Pro records everything for viewing later while eBlaster tracks everything and then e-mails a report of the computer's activity to a designated person. Both programs can monitor e-mails, Internet use, instant messaging and word processing programs. "It really gives you a very complete picture of what's going on because it's like you were sitting there," said Kasey Sellati, SpectorSoft's spokeswoman. Sellati said SpectorSoft's customers use the software to make sure employees aren't wasting time, saying inappropriate things or giving out confidential information. "Our goal overall is not to really block, but to arm people with the information about what's going on in the computer and to let people be able to monitor themselves," she said. September 2002 On Computers (Syndicated Technology Newspaper Column) "SpectorSoft is one of a handful of companies that make what might be called surveillance software. The target market is business and the stated objective is for a manager to see what the employees actually do when they are at the company computers. Are they working or are they playing dungeons and dragons. (Lest you think this is too paranoid, it's worth noting that a study of Internet use by the U.S. Treasury Department found that over half of all Internet use by employees of the Internal Revenue Service was for personal, not job-related, reasons.)"
Washington Post "Companies are just becoming more aware of abuse" by employees, says Fowler. His customers are looking for workers who spend all day on the Internet, who frequent porn sites and who send instant messages with disparaging information about the company. Fowler says one customer found out that an employee was embezzling money; another found that workers were running other businesses on company time or looking for new jobs all day.
PC Magazine - Editors' Choice PC Magazine awards Spector Professional Edition their coveted Editors' Choice award for Surveillance Software. The review states, "Spector Pro is one of the most feature-rich programs in this roundup, and it can capture a comprehensive list of information. It can snap screenshots, log keystrokes and SMTP and POP sessions, monitor instant messaging sessions, and capture every Web site accessed." The article goes on to state that Spector Pro is "...stealthier than the other products we reviewed; the utilities that betrayed most other products didn't reveal Spector Pro's presence. Spector Pro provides the best combination of features and polish among the tools we reviewed."** July 2002 Ladies Home Journal Ladies Home Journal explores parenting in the age of the Internet and examines software monitoring programs to keep kids from harm. Julia Thomas (name changed) of suburban Philadelphia chose Spector and gets piece of mind. Julia was concerned about her daughter Melanie after finding her missing from the house at 3AM. She turned to Spector and found that everything was okay. Despite leaving the home at 3AM, her daughter had met a female friend that night and Julia was reassured that "nothing dramatic was going on." Does Julia think monitoring is worth it? As she states, "There'd be a lot more conflict if I wasn't sure Melanie was behaving herself". May 6, 2002 San Francisco Business Times Fremont official Dave Jenson is concerned about traffic. Not on the city's roads, but on municipal employees' Internet connections. The city monitors its network for signs of dubious or distracted surfing, so if employees tiptoe into the darker corners of the web or dally too long at Schwab.com, they'll probably be warned. If they persist, or get caught making efforts to cover their digital footsteps, the network administrators install Spector. The software can record every keystroke entered at a particular workstation, whether it was saved or deleted. It can retrieve all emails sent from it -- even those using supposedly anonymous services such as Hotmail or AOL Instant Messaging. And it can not only look up the web pages or chat rooms the user visited, but exactly what was read, viewed or said there. "We use the software to find out exactly what they're doing," said Jenson, Fremont's director of information technology. Ricki Lake Featured on the syndicated television talk show Ricki Lake (airing on Monday, May 6).
SmartComputing SpectorSoft has two products for spying on your loved ones: Spector and eBlaster. You can use these products to monitor employees in a small business. These programs record all activity, such as keystrokes, Web sites visited, e-mails, instant messages, and chat room conversations, on the computer in which they're installed. Spector takes screen shots of the image on the computer screen and stores them so you can view them later. You can adjust the interval between screen shots, which can be as frequent as once every second. Once you type the password, Spector is disabled so you can access the stored data.
TechTV.com
Washingon Post Now we can add one more weapon to our arsenal, a next generation of the software known as spyware. eBlaster, as it's called, enables parents to check the Web sites young Caitlin and Caleb visit, whom they talk to online and what they say -- from any remote location. Worried at work -- or on a business trip out of town -- when your kid's at home after school? No problem. Once eBlaster is installed on a home computer, it records all Web sites visited, all applications launched, all keystrokes typed and sends an activity report to a specified e-mail address as frequently as every 30 minutes.
Time What can you expect if someone puts SpectorSoft's Spector 2.2 on your computer? It will secretly take hundreds of snapshots an hour of every website, chat group and e-mail that appears on your screen, and store them so that the special someone who is spying on you can review them later. A new product, SpectorSoft's eBlaster, will send the spy detailed e-mail reports updating your computer activities as often as every 30 minutes. These products work in stealth mode, so the people being spied on are totally unaware.
Fortune The End of Privacy: March 17, 2001 NBC Nightly News On March 17, NBC aired an article which showed various ways that parents keep track of where their children are and what they are up to. The segment discussed how parents are using monitoring tools to find out exactly what their children are doing on the Internet. A parent who uses Spector talked about how he uses the software. March 17-18, 2001 CNNdotCOM March 13, 2001 SmartMoney March 8, 2001 Family PC Monitoring Tools Winner: Spector 2.2 Grade: A February 19, 2001 Maclean's It could be your boss, your government, your spouse, or a sexual creep. As technology explodes, the law can't keep up. February 9, 2001 (Originally aired December 15, 2000) TechTV - CyberCrimes Show If you suspected your spouse or significant other was cheating on you, what lengths would you go to learn the truth?
Business Week Featured in the e.biz section of Business Week. November 6, 2000
The Wall Street Journal had a page one feature on various ways parents monitor their children's whereabouts and activities. Spector software was discussed as a way for parents to monitor their children's Internet activities. October 4, 2000 Ricki Lake Featured on the syndicated television talk show Ricki Lake September 29, 2000 NewsWeek Online Products: Corporate snooping software finds an unintended market— spouses in search of cheaters...
The Industry Standard September 12, 2000 The Dr. Laura Show Spector and Spectorsoft president Doug Fowler featured on the syndicated television talk show "Dr. Laura". August 21, 2000 ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings A Spector user is filmed talking about how she discovered that her husband August 9, 2000 Good Morning America SpectorSoft user Greg Young talks about how he discovered his wife July 5, 2000 Boston Globe Feature Article on Cyber Cheating. July 3, 2000 San Francisco Examiner June 22, 2000 New York Times The New York Times features Spector in its weekly Technology column called "Circuits". In this article, a woman who used Spector to prove that her husband was cheating attributed Spector to "saving her life". "I have no sympathy for people who would try to claim that two wrongs don't make a right," said the woman in Na |
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"Ever wonder what your teenager is doing online? New software allows you to monitor their email and Internet activities without their knowledge. Meet a mother and the teenage daughter she electronically spied on."
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If keeping an eye on things from a remote location is of paramount importance, SpectorSoft's eBlaster should be at the top of your list. This software goes into deep hiding on the computer on which it's installed. It secretly monitors such information as which programs have been running, how long they've been actively in use, and which keystrokes were typed. The biggest plus to this electronic snooping is that once a full report has been compiled, it's sent via email from the suspect computer without the user's knowledge.
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