My 10yrs son is always addicted to computer and spends more time on the computer than his study . I am really worried about him. While I often go to work and have no much time to accompany him, so I want to check what he usually do on the Internet. I searched google and got kelogger for mac. Have u guys used it before or have any more informative website? If any, thank you very much.

thank God for a parent who cares! I don't know much about this subject, but I wanted to give you kudos. Also keep in mind google's new incognito browsing and also I think firefox has something similar

thank you very much

I'm not a parent, so I'm probably not the most qualified person to comment on this thread, but I'll take a shot nontheless.

Regardless of what "software" you install on your son's computer, he will probably find a way to circumnavigate it. Back in high school, I got around the security software installed in the system relatively easily - I kind of just picked it up using the computer, surfing the net and asking people. So if your son is reasourceful, he will find a way.

It's probably a better tactic to try and cultivate some of his other interests. Does he play any instruments? What about outdoor activities? Emphasize these, and he might just go for them.

Just a last thought: from a kid's perspective, there is nothing more annoying than an intrusive parent. I'm sure when you were younger you felt the same way. I'm in college and I still get annoyed when my parents check in. My personal opinion: the more you try to reign him in, the more he will buckle.

Yes- but 10y old boys have idle hands o.O. thought about this some more- if he clears all history; that's a flag he's up to no good- if he isn't he might not be hiding all to well amid a registry search may alert you to his where abouts- I assume Macs have a registry?)

Flag? What flag? Just because an individual clears the browsers history doesn't necessarily mean that the individual is doing anything questionable.

There are plently of legitimate reasons to clear the browser cache. I routinely do so to speed up the browser. Back when I was developing web sites, I found I would have to clear the cache sometimes to view the updated content. My 11-year old brother swears that clearing the cache helps prevent people from stealing his online account passwords.

In a lot of cases clearing history can be beneficial. I do not allow my browsers to retain any password info- as for cache I too clear that often... IMO unless you are running an acient system there is no reason to clear the information of pages visited, and if all of a sudden someone using my computer starts clearing ALL history I am going to wonder what they are doing- why they feel the need to clear the browser's history. A ten year old is not developing and most likely does not have a concept of clearing a cache to increase performance. It is a flag- Also, considering that my sister is a behavioral therapist; and my g/f's dad is a developmental psychology professor, I do know that sudden radical changes in behavior are "flags" that should be watched. I'm not saying he is doing anything- I simply said that if he is clearing the history that is a flag that should be inspected. There is a lot of crap on the internet that should be kept in check; and kids make stupid mistakes. To a caring and tentative parent (OP of this thread) these can help them nip things before they are problematic. It could be as simple as (and as to not offend the nature of OP's son, using a generic adolescent) he/she stumbled across a site of adult content such as jokes and crude humor (I know that for me, if I had been caught on any website containing language I would have been grounded)... it could be more such as an "adult" site... it could be something malicious, it could also be nothing more than they hard from a friend that it was a good idea... who knows- but radical behavior changes are flags and from my experience and hearing about case studies watching flags that are simple as "all of a sudden clearing the history" can prevent things that escalate.

scripthacker, I bet the OP didn't expect a thread to dive so deep so early

I too have a psycologist relative who is eminent in her field. Hasn't rubbed off on me. I am only qualified in what I qualified in.

Anyhoo, it's pretty obvious both, from when I was a boy and with my son (and daughter), young people are inquisitive and will explore things. So I am with BWiz on this.

The only thing I should add is, help your children keep the computer in some sort of sane context. It may be an addictive thing but he/she needs to keep in touch with reality - literally. Too much of something is a negative thing. Not necessarily bad!

What may be a worse approach is to put the issue of 'does Dad trust me' into their head. That could send him off the rails completely, especially when we consider from our adult lives how easy trust is to create, then destroy, never fully, able to reinstate it. (or is that just part of my life)

On the same basis, if anyone snoops on their children secretly (like with hidden software) or they know that 'Dad' is watching via software, they could possibly become resentful of the parent who clearly (in the child's mind), doesn't trust them. And they can either do stuff much worse or just go to a friends house where the parents of that house are not so hands on.


And as one 9 year old son of a friend told me a few years ago, Mum got the computer with parental software so she could feel good that we weren't doing anything bad. We found the hack that weekend and so we can switch it off.

I shan't offer any parental advice to the OP but, imho, the mere fact that the OP asked the question, perhaps suggests he hasn't much to worry about. To use Alykins term, it serves as a flag - a sign of caring parenting.

And who saiys 10 year old don't code? anyone recall error 404. he was around that age when he started here.

a lot of good points.
I guess I just have the background of three views... I have two sisters and myself. I know what I did being an adolescent male, and I see the outcomes of what my sisters children do.
On one hand the one (behavioral therp) is very tentative to even the slightest changes in behavior and her children are very respectful. While they have liberal views they maintain a very structured household.
The other is not so invested in what her children do and her daughters are off doing things that if I even begin to think about I rage bc my little nieces are acting like--- well I'll say no more.
And then there's my aspect where I was/have been interested in technology and getting around things and what not and (granted I think I turned out ok) I definetly did and saw things at a way to early age bc my mom can;t even figure out how to open Word on the computer... so- I may be biased... but as I said I think cubes, you made a many good points

Hi, cubes, i only want to know much about some keyloggers for mac and i got some like kelogger for mac on the internet. Please help me if you know a lot about this, thanks in advance. By the way, can you tell me what is the "OP"?

Hi,

OP means Original Poster which in this thread was you

The point of my long post was as much about having a friendly jibe at cubes as it was about answered the bigger question about children on the web.

whatever you do to 'monitor' them, they will know of or easily find a way around it either from their friends or from the internet. I don't think there is any way to prevent them from accessing stuff that is not passworded by the actual website and, even then, they can be hacked into.

And a keylogger script is quite straightforward (for a PC; I don't know about MACs), and quite easy to adjust, both in terms of what it's used for and what its records are.