Programs designed to monitor user activity. They may be used with or without consent. Because it is sold commercially, many anti-virus vendors do not detect them. The most common form of a commercial monitoring tool comes in the form of a keystroke logger, which intercepts keystrokes from the keyboard and records them in a log. This can then be sent to whoever installed the software, or keylogger, onto the machine. Some Commercial Monitoring Software may take screenshots or video and send the information to an outbound connection.
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From Downloads.com:
"MING Chat Monitor Home is a simple and affordable software solution for parents who want to control, monitor, and archive unlimited IM traffic on home network, including: AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and QQ. Parents can view instant messages in the database, search the conversations by key word, or watch top users. It is able to record conversations automatically in stealth mode."
