How to spy on users?

[mbmast]

I'm using WinGate in my home to provide Internet access to my two teenagers. Is it possible to use WinGate's caching to spy on what my kids are doing? What about protocols other than HTTP, like those used for IM?

Thanks,

Mike (A concerned parent)

[ChrisH]

Mike,

Been there, done that. Spy is a heavy word- how about watch over. I found the best way was to be sure that each child had their own log in ID ,and then enable user logging in WG- Oh you will get complaints about that, just remind them who is paying the bill!. That way I can review the log files periodically and see where they had been in HTTP. IM is a little trickier, you could end up with the IP's of "friends" but not much more, I think. I like the ability to set time parameters and a black list if need be features of WG for this type of scenario.

Good luck.

[ImmediateAction]

Next time you see your kids on a messenger program, tell them to go do the dishes. If they are using MSN Messenger Live, then open it up, go to the tools menu, options, Messages, Message History, and change the path to a directory on your computer; i.e. map a drive then put that drive path in your teenagers MSN Messenger history setting.

The conversations are not formatted well, but the details are in there.
Most Messaging programs have a history setting.