> -----Original Spam-----
> From: Jacob Kennedy
>
> Want to know what your daughter or husbund
> is really doing online?

although targeted to [presumably] the woman of the household, don't be
surprised if you catch on to stuff like this on your office computer --
remember, it isn't "your" property, but the property of your employer...
[however, snooping on employees is very grey area no matter how you slice
it...]

> Catch A Sneak spy software secretly records every key pressed

Easy enough to do if you have a smattering of windows internals knowledge,
it's the "keeping it secret" part that tends to be the problem...

> and also saves a screenshot every minute when
> mouse activity is detected.

Hmmm... one 1280x1024x32 screen shot/minute when I'm "actively" moving the
mouse... no wonder my 80gb hard drive is already full!  (that's a 5 megabyte
screenshot every minute!)  figuring as follows...
   8 working hours/day = 480 minutes
   "mouse" activity 60% of the day (*) = 288 captures
   5meg * 288 = 1.4gb/day
   80gb / 1.4gb =  57 days
   at 22.5 working days/month, that amounts to
   an 80gb hard drive every couple of months!
[ok, so maybe they use compression?]

> Catch A Sneak is completely invisible, even when
> control-alt-delete is pressed.

Again, fairly trivial -- I'm sure there is a document or two on MS's MSDN
site outlining the proper 'doze calls to "hide" your application [service]
from the task manager; hiding it from an INFORMED user, however, is trickier
[msinfo32.exe provides a wealth of info... ;) ]

> It is extremely easy to install and use.

unless your daughter/husband/employee is savvy enough to use Linux or a
Mac... ;)  [or if stuck with windows, savvy enough to track down spyware
such as this and cover their tracks]

Tom

(*) 60% is your typical SWAG -- I suppose this would be higher if you use
more graphically-oriented software [CAD/CAM, video production, etc. (**)]
Lower mouse-vs-keyboard activities such as straight text entry [word
processing, heads-down data entry] would [should] be lower... (if not,
you're wasting time using a mouse...)

(**) Playing "first-person shooter games" tends to make use of the mouse
100% of the hour, and what player in their right mind wouldn't notice the
program "glitching" once a minute as some "background process" tries to make
a snapshot of you fragging your friends at 100 yards? ;)

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