PROVIDENCE, R.I., 7 October 2003 — Her name is Susie. Her profile on Yahoo says she’s a student in Australia, “single and looking.” The problem is what she’s looking for.
If her profile is to be believed, Susie is just 13, yet she has been found freely surfing “adult” Yahoo chat rooms where, in some cases, the topics are often too twisted to list in a family publication.
I worry about kids like her. I’ll bet her parents don’t know what she’s up to.
Keeping an eye on children as they surf the Internet has always been a challenge. Savvy kids know how to cover their tracks after visiting forbidden sites.
In response, some software companies have developed products designed to track secretly where a surfer has been and virtually everything a computer has been used to do.
The products are known collectively as “spyware.” Company owners can use it to see if their employees are goofing off. Married people can use it to check on a spouse. Parents can use it to see if their child is visiting obsceneWeb Site.com.
One such product, “eBlaster 3.0” from SpectorSoft ($100, http://www.eblaster.com), claims to record every keystroke a person makes, copy each piece of incoming and outgoing e-mail, log chat-room conversations and take down every instant message relayed through AOL, MSN and Yahoo.
The spy can control which types of information will be logged. A summary of the log is periodically e-mailed to the spy. Copies of all e-mail also get sent.
But it doesn’t always work as promised.
When I tried it on a networked computer with a firewall, the program didn’t do anything. However, when I loaded it on my non-networked computer at home, I immediately began getting duplicates of all e-mails I received, along with a list of every website I visited, when I visited it, and how long I was there.
All passwords were easily discernible.
At first, the report from the chat rooms was a little limited, There was no way to tell the name of the room I was in, or what other people were saying in the room, which wouldn’t have been very helpful for Susie’s parents.
When I told SpectorSoft that their product didn’t live up to its billing, they sent me to a “patch” on the Internet. (Unfortunately, most consumers won’t know to look for it.)
With the patch, I was able to see all sides of the conversation in Yahoo chat rooms and instant messages. However, “eBlaster” still only recorded my side of the conversations in Internet Relay Chat, an older chat system. I was also unable to get the program to record mail from a Yahoo account, as promised. It would only log what I typed.
“EBlaster” recorded everything I wrote in a Microsoft Word file, but did not log any of the keystrokes in the DOS-based program I use to write this column.
Despite its limitations, “eBlaster 3.0” secretly strips away most of the privacy of anyone using your PC. It’s almost impossible to know that the program is even running.
My greatest concern is that the information gathered by the program is, as a matter of routine, sent via SpectorSoft’s computers. Not only is the spy seeing all the IDs, passwords, messages and credit card information that are being typed into your computer, but so is SpectorSoft.
The company says “eBlaster” can be configured to directly send its reports to another e-mail account, avoiding the SpectorSoft computers.
More importantly, a spokeswoman said, all the personal information that is sent through its computers is automatically deleted. It should be noted, by the way, that if you are receiving your spyware reports at work, so is your employer; employers have the right to make copies and examine all your e-mail.
Programs like this raise other issues involving trust and disclosure.
When I loaded “eBlaster,” I got a message asking me to “agree that I will NOT install ‘eBlaster’ on any computer I do not own. I also agree to inform anyone whose PC and Internet activities that are to be monitored using eBlaster software that their PC and Internet activities are subject to being recorded and monitored.”
If you choose to notify people, “eBlaster” can be configured to post a warning whenever the computer is turned on.
But I doubt many consumers will use the notification feature. First, few people are going to buy a $100 software package unless they have serious suspicions. Second, human nature being what it is, most people would rather sneak around and spy on their family, friends or employees rather than disclose that they’ve installed spyware on the computer, an announcement that’s almost guaranteed to start a fight.
But let me save you some money.
If you have concerns about what family members are doing on the Internet, talk to them. Ask what they’re doing on line.
Let your children know what you consider to be appropriate or inappropriate. Make sure they know to never give out personal information.
If you have issues with a spouse, don’t let them simmer. Give your employees ground rules for what they can or cannot do on line and on company time.
Software like this should be a last resort. Having someone discover that you’ve been spying on them is a very efficient way to destroy whatever trust remains in a fragile relationship, and that reservoir of trust may be crucial to salvaging and rebuilding that relationship.
