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How to secretly monitor employees or family members using their Macs

Friday, August 27, 2010 · 12:05 pm · 22 Comments

“If you have an office or school full or Macs, or just a family of Mac users, do you know what they’re doing on their Macs?” Natalia Nowak asks for Mac360.

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“Macs can be guarded with secret monitoring and recording apps that capture everything a user does on their Macs,” Nowak reports. “Everything.”

Nowak reports. “Look around your office, home, or school. If you have Macs or PCs then you have users who could be doing what they should not be doing.”

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Comment Feed

22 Comments

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bill303

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 12:09 pm · Reply

Creepy. Sure for schools – but only if they own the computers – spying on your family isn’t probably the best way to build trust. Try using Apple’s built in parental controls to limit what you don’t want your family exposed to.
Marko

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 12:11 pm · Reply

thats kinda an invasion of privacy isnt it…
Tyoung

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 12:30 pm · Reply

Hope my wife doesn’t read this!
silverwarloc

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 12:34 pm · Reply

I use logmein…the free version. Works well with my three macs. Best one I’ve used so far.
Cubert

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 12:47 pm · Reply

The article only mentions one piece of software. Not really a good article. Plus you can watch desktops in real time using OS X Server.
dpp

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 12:59 pm · Reply

The whole premise of the article is offensive. If I knew every move I made on a computer was being monitored by software, I’d reboot it with an Ubuntu Live CD – if I couldn’t just wipe and reinstall OSX.

I’m a parent and I certainly wouldn’t impose that type of surveillance on my family members.

Only the paranoid survive? That’s the stupidist BS I’ve ever heard.
K MacK

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 1:28 pm · Reply

That’s spyware and I know a dozen companies that use it on their employees on both Macs and Windows PCs. It’s business, so a certain amount of paranoia makes sense. You don’t think Apple is paranoid about what their employees do? Employees sometimes abuse their time and their computers, so a company has both the right and obligation to monitor employee behavior on devices they provide for employees to do, you know, actual work. Spying on your children is a slightly different issue, but monitoring isn’t far removed from Parental Controls, and nobody complains about those. My neighbor has three teenagers and sometimes when I visit the parents ask me to check their Mac. A quick scan of cookies in Safari will reveal that more parents should check what their kids are doing online. So, you don’t like spyware? You must be doing something you’re ashamed of, huh?
KingMel

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 1:35 pm · Reply

The Mac OS parental controls don’t work that well, in my opinion. Perhaps I did not apply them correctly, but it seemed that they was not a good middle ground. The settings were too restrictive, resulting in numerous requests for approval to do things that were OK), and I eventually ended up turning them off for the older three kids.

The best parental control is good and frequent communication with your kids. They will find a way around the other restrictions – if not at home, then somewhere else.
BMWTwisty

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 3:08 pm · Reply

@Tyoung: Hope my wife doesn’t read this!

Man, I am so busted, dammit…
J bone

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 3:20 pm · Reply

No more pornhub. Damn
x

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 3:29 pm · Reply

All for spyware. Employees are lazy ass slugs, need to be watched with spyware, taught to fear the cattle prod. I say use both on the dumbass guy in the white house now.
ron

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 4:02 pm · Reply

x, “All for spyware. Employees are lazy ass slugs, need to be watched with spyware, taught to fear the cattle prod. I say use both on the dumbass guy in the white house now.”

I’m with you x, People who are being paid to do a job should not be gaming or reading their emails. You get paid – you work.

I believe you were being sarky with your comments about l-a-slugs, but I’m not.
Puke

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 4:11 pm · Reply

Followed by dry heaving
Hm...

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 4:39 pm · Reply

@ x and ron

There’s a real precedent for what you’re advocating. However you’ll both need to get out your brown shirts to wear then. From your comments here and elsewhere, it’s obvious you’d both fit quite well in that group.
NCIceman

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 5:39 pm · Reply

I am slacking off at work right now reading MDN….DOH!
kenh

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 6:43 pm · Reply

Here is how it works. I trade my time to my employer for money. If I want the money, I need to give him my time.

Fair trade. If you can’t handle it, go home and live in your mothers basement.

I work in a consumer relations environment, every call I make or take, every computer stroke I make in the course of the job is recorded.

Can I handle it? Yes. They are paying for my time. If I am not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to fear.

If they were monitoring what I do at home, then Yes I would be VERY unhappy.

Then again, we know that the government can monitor most anything they want.

THAT I am totally afraid of. I can always work for someone else or start my own company where I can do what I choose until I go broke by slacking on my own time.

Government…………..well, don’t know if you can avoid them, and that does scare me.
Dave H

Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 6:23 am · Reply

I have no problem with this providing the employers realise that everyone is entitled to occasional breaks. It’s those that sit on FaceBook for hours at a time that need to worry.
Ilovefood

Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 9:02 am · Reply

This is funny and I so love this xx
Hm...

Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 9:24 am · Reply

@ kenh

How commendable that, while at work, you never call to check on car repairs, or schedule an appointment at the dentist’s office, or order a pizza to pick up, or take a call from someone reminding you of an appointment, or look at a magazine, or get a personal email or joke from another employee who must then be one of those slackers! What dedication! I am in awe…
G4Dualie

Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 11:13 am · Reply

Tera Patrick’s just rolled over in her grave…