This is a suite of 8 programs - a collection of the most useful, fully-functional / full-featured software that allows you to have complete control over the security of your PC. Included in the archive is a program that actually installs a keylogger program so that you can secretly monitor activity on any PC, and an Internet activity monitor that logs every Web page visited from a particular PC. Also included are various utilities to locate, disable, and remove keyloggers and spyware that are installed by visits to Web sites, and by infected software. The programs included in the archive are described below:

Spy Arsenal / Internet Spy is a tiny utility that continuously monitors every web page accessed on the computer and creates a chronological record of all visited URLs. The program can automatically load at system startup and optionally run in a completely hidden mode. The logged URLs are written to a plain text file. The program is simple and easy to use, either for monitoring of web activity, or to keep a personal journal of visited sites.

User Logger stores information about who is using the computer it is installed on and when they used it. It can log user activity, with the option to stop logging once the log reaches a certain size. User Logger can also take automatic screen captures of the desktop at a specified interval or whenever a specified keyword is triggered by the user. An optional warning screen can inform the user, that he is being logged if so desired. Some additional options (encryption, scheduling, key capture) are offered but disabled in the freeware version.

KL-Detector is designed to provide a way to find out whether your activity is being recorded with a keylogger application. It uses the fact that most keyloggers create a hidden log file on your hard drive and therefore scans for any suspicious activity during a test period that you have to initiate. Basically, it asks you to use the keyboard for several minutes, type some text or do similar activities, while it is monitoring your system to check if it can detect any suspicious logging activity. KL-Detector is intended for occasional use and not as a permanently running program, as normal PC activity may cause false positives. During our test, it did detect changes in a keylogger log file (that we installed), but it did not find the activity suspicious enough to warn us. Advanced users may get value by inspecting the logged items, however novice users should not rely on the results.

XP-AntiSpy is a small utility to quickly disable some built-in update and authentication features in Windows-XP that may raise security or privacy concerns in some people. For example, there is a service running in the background which is called Automatic Updates... that may sound useful to most people, but suspicious to others. You can disable all these features manually by going through your configuration; find the settings for each etc. However with XP-AntiSpy there is no need to do this, since it will show you all of them at once and let you choose which ones to disable. Not only will it save you a lot of time disabling them - it will also allow you to quickly re-enable them if you change your mind.

AdAware is a privacy tool that scans your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known data-mining, aggressive advertising, and tracking components. It then lists the results and offers to remove or quarantine the components. The program detects a wide range of adware/spyware related issues and can be updated with the latest signatures via the built-in update utility. The free version is strictly a scanner, and does not provide any real-time protection.

PeerGuardian is an IP address blocker that can prevent access to thousands of sites. It uses multiple, categorized lists and you can choose which type of site(s) you want to block, including spyware/malware related, advertising related, P2P file sharing related and more. The lists are maintained and updated by a community and you can automatically have the program download the latests lists, and also create your own based on your personal blocking preference. PeerGuardian 2 keeps track of all blocked sites, and you can easily overwrite blocking rules or add new site directly from the log viewer.

Active Security Monitor scans your computer and provides you with a consolidated overview of your PC security based on the existence of common security products such as an up-to-date anti-virus scanner, a firewall and a spyware scanner, as well as various Windows and Internet Explorer security settings. Based on its findings, the program will assign an overall security score (0-100) to your PC and provide you with suggestions (and product recommendations) on how to improve your score. If you have multiple computers connected to a network, you can also view the security status for all other PCs that have Active Security Monitor installed, and with free registration you can even monitor the security status for your entire network remotely from a web browser. The program will continuously monitor your PC(s) and alert you of any changes. Active Security Monitor is limited to security assessment based on (non-)existence of specific security products, and designed to create awareness of these potential risks - it does not test the actual effectiveness of your firewall or other security products. With a slick and easy to use interface, we found it mostly useful for novice users that are unfamiliar with the potential risks and available solutions.

Anti-Virus Free Edition is an anti-virus scanner that offers Resident Protection, e-mail Scanner, On-Demand Scanner, and Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files and automatic updates. The free version is limited in features, but includes all basic scanning functionality as well as real-time protection. It uses the same scanning engine as the commercial version, however updates are provided on a low priority basis.

NOTE FOR ALL SPYWARE / KEYLOGGER PROGRAMS

Modern anti-virus programs can detect a wide range of potentially dangerous programs. This normally goes far beyond traditional viruses and worms and often includes heuristic alerts, which basically means that you can get alerts when an anti-virus program "thinks it could be ..."

In many cases, users download a keylogger, remote access software, PC monitoring software or similar applications, not realizing that these programs actually could be considered a Trojan; Not because they are infected with anything but because they could violate your privacy or IF they were installed WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE! If anti-virus software did not warn you, then anybody could trick you into installing such software, or install it on your computer without your consent.

If you get a warning message from your virus / spyware program when you install the keylogger or IP blocker programs, you can safely ignore the warning, and tell your program to ignore the "spyware" (After all, it IS spyware you are – knowingly – installing, but it is being done intentionally by you for a specific purpose). If you get no warning messages when you install the keylogger, check to see that your system spyware utility is installed and working properly.