WebWatcher ($169.95 direct, 4 stars), Editor's Choice specifically for parental monitoring software, does virtually everything Spector Pro does, and more. PC Pandora 7.0 is likewise very little different from its previous edition. Social networking is huge now, and of growing importance, but Spector Pro's coverage remains rudimentary. The biggest difference, in fact, was an increase in glitches over the last version. Even though more than two years had passed since my review of the previous version, I was hard-pressed to find any visible difference. No Visible Progress I had a serious sense of déjà vu when reviewing Spector Pro 2011. If I can find multiple visible bugs after months of testing, what's happening with all the promised invisible enhancements? This instability doesn't do much for my confidence. SpectorSoft promises a new release soon that will fix those problems. Some of the problems I ran into got fixed, but at present the MySpace login problem and the IM conversation display problem are still outstanding. In some cases, parts of instant messaging conversations were cut off. Spector Pro detected that I spent time on MySpace, but failed to capture login credentials. Later, when the profile capture problem was fixed, clicking the link to view a visited profile triggered an error message. This happened several times over several months.ĭuring the course of the review I found that Facebook messages weren't captured, nor were Facebook profiles that I visited. They in turn asked me to hold off the review a little while, until the problems could be fixed. I asked my SpectorSoft contacts how to see these features in action. As I worked through the various features I found several that didn't seem to work. Glitches I started my review of this product in July. I would have liked to see some actual progress in this area. At this point parents have full access to the child's account… but mining the account for possibly worrisome content becomes a tedious manual task. It doesn't record wall posts or comments and offers no information about friends, photos, or other content.Īt the top of each social networking page parents will find the username and password for each account detected, with a button that logs into the account. Spector Pro captures chat messages sent and received on Facebook or MySpace, records other user profiles visited, and notes how much time was spent. What you get from Spector Pro is nothing like the organized and filtered information provided by tools like SocialShield ($96/year direct, 4.5 stars), uKnowKids ($9.95/month direct, 4 stars), and ZoneAlarm SocialGuard ($19.99 direct for five licenses, 4 stars). This feature is virtually unchanged in the current edition, just updated to keep pace with the constantly-changing features of the social networking sites themselves. Social Networking SpectorSoft added a modicum of social network tracking in the 2009 edition, specifically tracking MySpace and Facebook. Buttons at the top let parents view the all-time top ten lists or limit the lists to more recent activity. You can also block access to a website or an IM contact directly from the list. This tab reports the top ten IM contacts, websites visited, search terms used, email contacts, programs launched, and keywords flagged.Įach listed item comes with a button that jumps to the corresponding page of details. The Top Ten tab gives parents a helpful overview of what's going on. Top Ten All of this recorded information can be overwhelming, clearly. But the screenshots and keystroke log will reveal the truth. If the kid manages to launch a secure anonymizing proxy, every site they visit will seem to be a page of the proxy site. If the child uses an IM client that the program can't track directly, you can still view the conversation in screen captures and see every keystroke typed. The fact that keystrokes and screens are logged means that Spector Pro is inescapable. As with screen captures, you can jump from other event types directly to the corresponding recorded keystrokes. So, for example, you could scroll down the list to a social networking login page and view the captured username and password. Spector Pro records every keystroke and organizes its recordings in a time-ordered list based on the window title into which the keys were typed. Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Software.
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