The features found in parental control and monitoringutilities cover a very wide spectrum. They all aim to protect kids from Internet dangers, but the degree to which they monitor online activity varies. Way out in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum you find products strongly focused on monitoring, like Spector Pro 2011 ($99.95/direct). With this type of utility in place, absolutely everything that happens on the child's computer is recorded.

What's New

I reviewed an earlier version of this product, Spector Pro 2009 ($99.95 direct, 4 stars), several years ago. When I first installed the 2011 edition, I hardly saw any difference. I checked in with the company to learn just what's new.

Just about all of the improvements are things you can't see, it turns out. This version is updated for efficient in-program activity capture in all the latest browsers and chat clients. It's also up to date with the latest versions of Facebook and MySpace—at least, until they change again.

Jeani Park, SpectorSoft's senior director of product strategy explained, "Our recorder does a better job of capturing everything, on a broader set of applications, in shorter timeframes. So, the recorder component is more stable, more accurate, and faster, across more applications." Park continued, "This may sound simple, but it isn't. Engineers have to reverse engineer the monitored applications to understand how they operate, so we can be sure to faithfully record, play back, and present all activity within that monitored application."

This edition enhances the product's ability to run in stealth mode, undetected. Its screen capture feature is "triggered in more granular time elements, and saved locally for fast retrieval and playback." Once again, these enhancements aren't visible.

Stealth Install

During installation of the program you must agree that you'll only install it on a computer that you own, and that you'll inform those using the computer that they're being watched. Nothing stops you from lying, though. You could definitely use this monitoring power for evil, spying on a spouse or a co-worker. I'll assume, though, that you don't plan to do that. Maybe you'll even enable the option to warn users at logon that monitoring software is active.

PC Pandora 7.0 ($109.95 direct, 3.5 stars) displays a much more detailed privacy agreement during installation. However, users accustomed to clicking past EULAs probably won't even notice it.

A wary kid won't find an obvious monitoring process in Task Manager, or in a list of startup programs. The program filename is randomized for each installation, as are names of the data folder and data files, and even the extension for data files. Clearly stealth is important.

To bring up the reporting module, you press a special key combination that you define yourself. This brings up a password dialog that doesn't mention Spector Pro. Unless you enter the user-defined password that's as far as you'll get. More stealth here! PC Pandora and WebWatcher ($169.95 direct, 4 stars) use a similar pairing of special keystroke combination and password for access.

User Profiles

By default, Spector Pro's settings apply equally to all users of the system. If you want different handling for any particular Windows account, perhaps your own, you simply associate a new user profile with that account and change its settings.

For each profile, you can enable, disable, or fine-tune any of the ten areas that Spector Pro tracks. There's also an option to set a weekly schedule and monitor only during specific times. This might make sense if you use the computer during the day but give the kids access after work hours.

WebWatcher doesn't support multiple profiles. With PC Pandora you can turn overall monitoring on or off for specific Windows accounts.