{"id":2868,"date":"2007-10-02T18:37:38","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T16:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/use-your-pc-as-a-surveillance-tool\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:44:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:44:30","slug":"use-your-pc-as-a-surveillance-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/use-your-pc-as-a-surveillance-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"Use your PC as a surveillance tool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"left\" alt=\"PC Security and Monitoring\" id=\"image2867\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2007\/10\/security.jpg\" \/>Be warned: while you&#8217;re happily browsing your favorite blogs during working hours, your boss may be watching you more closely than you think. Yes, there are many ways in which a computer can be used for surveiling, controlling or monitoring its usage, and you wouldn&#8217;t even notice it.<\/p>\n<p>First, we should make a clear distinction between programs that you can use to track your own work, and programs used to control your PC usage in the background. Work tracking tools such as <a href=\"http:\/\/time-tracker.en.softonic.com\/\">Time Tracker<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/worktime.en.softonic.com\/\">WorkTime<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/time-worked-calculator.en.softonic.com\/\">Time Worked Calculator<\/a> are useful when you need to know exactly how much time you&#8217;ve spent on a given project. They&#8217;re also a good way to control your level of procrastination, as you can do with <a href=\"http:\/\/hronos.en.softonic.com\/\">Hronos<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>However, monitoring tools are often used to control computer usage and check which applications have been run or which files have been opened. You can find general monitoring programs like <a href=\"http:\/\/pc-james-bond-007.en.softonic.com\/\">PC James Bond 007<\/a> and also more specialized tools such as <a href=\"http:\/\/msn-messenger-monitor-sniffer.en.softonic.com\/\">MSN Messenger Monitor Sniffer<\/a>, which is devoted to record MSN chats. But these aren&#8217;t by far the only ones. Just take a look at our <a href=\"http:\/\/prevention.en.softonic.com\/\">Prevention<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/keyloggers.en.softonic.com\/\">Keyloggers<\/a> sections and you&#8217;ll see for yourself. You can even use your webcam as a <a href=\"http:\/\/surveillance.en.softonic.com\/\">surveillance system<\/a>, with motion-detect technology, automatic recording, SMS warnings and all the bells and whistles.<\/p>\n<p>Now, before you freak out and start looking for any hidden tasks in your system, let me calm things down: there are also tools to avoid being caught by your boss when you&#8217;re chatting, browsing, downloading P2P stuff and other things you&#8217;re not supposed to do at work. One of them is <a href=\"http:\/\/efreesoft-boss-key.en.softonic.com\/\">Efreesoft Boss Key<\/a>, which enables to hide any active program window with a simple keystroke. Another good example is the <a href=\"http:\/\/microsoft-word-web-browser.en.softonic.com\/\">Word Web Browser<\/a>, with which you can safely browse the web and hide it under a fake Word window when needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Be warned: while you&#8217;re happily browsing your favorite blogs during working hours, your boss may be watching you more closely than you think. Yes, there are many ways in which a computer can be used for surveiling, controlling or monitoring its usage, and you wouldn&#8217;t even notice it. First, we should make a clear distinction &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/use-your-pc-as-a-surveillance-tool\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Use your PC as a surveillance tool&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-2868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336995,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions\/336995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=2868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}