Parents and employers who want to block websites based on their inappropriate content will be be able to do so with Spector Pro, but they'll have to do it after the fact or come up with lists of sites for website blocking ahead of time.

We sad to say there are no category-based website blocking lists like those found in other computer monitoring software systems to help out with blocking content, so the software will also require more legwork to block sites based on their content, URL, or images.

Offering this feature would make easier website blocking for people without the time to construct their own list of good or bad sites.

We hope Spector Pro will keep this in mind for next year.

Website blocking itself is fairly easy with Spector Pro--you can just click a button, or enter sites manually--but this extra step is eliminated by several other website blocking programs we rate.

Parents, employers, and even concerned spouses can rely on Spector Pro's website monitoring to show them every website visited on the PC in question.

This in particular is one place where Spector Pro really shines.

With website monitoring Spector uses will know whether or not inappropriate sites have been visited, when, how often, and for how long.

And for those who need real-life updates of urgent situations or who can't always be at their desk, the program can even contact them remotely either through a cell phone or via email when the monitoring system is activated.

This happens when keywords you choose are triggered by the websites visited by the person/people you're monitoring.

For some people, this is a terrific feature that's a nifty way for busy people to stay abreast of situations and the data that Spector Pro is recording.

Social Media Website Monitoring

Social Media sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are all the rage these days, and they represent different problems for different computer monitoring software buyers.

For parents, social media sites represent a great place for their kids to interact with others, but dangers like cyber bullying and online sexual predators are a very real concern in places like these.

For employers, social media sites are places where employees might be doing legitimate marketing for your company. Or wasting valuable time. Likewise, they may even posting information that doesn't reflect well on the business.

And concerned spouses or partners might find that some of the "friends" on these sites aren't behaving appropriately towards their significant other (or that their spouses aren't behaving appropriately themselves.)

Spector Pro records all of the activities that take place in social media sites, including passwords and usernames used to access accounts.

It also records the instant messages and emails that take place on the site and offers the information in a format that's easy to access and review.

Monitoring Search History

If you want to keep track of the user's search history, Spector Pro records those made through the most popular search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Bing/MSN, and Ask.

This is important because many tech-savvy kids and adults know how to erase their search history when they don't want it known that they're searching for something inappropriate online.

Furthermore, the search engines all feature image search functions that let you preview images right at the search engines without visiting the sites hosting them.

This can make it harder to spot someone who's viewing inappropriate content online because it can be tough to zero in on this just through looking at the website monitoring logs.

Website monitoring logs alone would require quite a bit of digging to show that the seemingly innocuous visits to the search engines were actually attempts to view pornographic or otherwise inappropriate content.

This is another tool that many buyers will find useful.

Instant messages are notoriously hard to understand, and often represent spaces where dangerous behaviors can occur. Parents need to know who their kids are talking to, and what's being said.

Employers need to make sure that employees aren't sending inappropriate materials or wasting time on the job. And suspicious husbands and wives need to know who's communicating with their spouses and why.

Spector Pro records both sides of all instant messages, including the names of senders. Specific IM contacts can be blocked once you decide that the contact isn't safe or appropriate.

And for parents Spector Pro offers a special bonus: Their instant messaging log includes the translations of many common IM abbreviations.

So, if you're struggling to understand the abbreviated language many kids use when they chat, this can help you to translate what your child is really saying online.

Spector Pro does a good job here, too. It records all incoming and outgoing e-mail messages, including any attachments that go with them.

Even web-based emails are captured, recorded, and logged. While webmail certainly has legitimate purposes, some people do use it to try to send or receive "untraceable" information.

All-in-all, we'd say Spector Pro was among the best software we saw at recording email into the popular web-based email services.

Screenshots allow you to get a visual of each website visited by the user, making it easier to see if ambiguous sounding sites are actually inappropriate and need to be blocked.

They provide a great way to streamline the computer monitoring process, and to minimize the "guess work" that other programs don't address.

One of the best implemented technologies in Spector Pro is the screen capture playback, which allows you to view in a mini-movie format the screen captures that Spector Pro recorded.

We think screenshots are one of the most important features in computer monitoring software. It's one of the things that separates the best computer monitoring software from the second-rate programs.

We're pleased to see how well Spector Pro's screen capture feature does its job.

Setting computer usage limits are important for a variety of reasons. Parents will want to know that their kids aren't accessing the Internet when mom and dad are away, at work, or asleep.

And employers can use computer usage limits to make sure that valuable billable hours aren't being wasted by employees surfing the net.

Spector Pro allows you to set computer usage limits that "lock down" the Internet in increments of your choosing, making it easier to manage computer monitoring and to control online behavior.

Whether you're a parent, employer, or concerned spouse, remote monitoring is another "must-have" feature for effective computer monitoring.

It just doesn't make sense that you should have to return to the PC you're monitoring to get your results, particularly when stealth is such an important objective for so many people.

(Do you really want the person you're monitoring to walk in while you're at that computer viewing the recorded data?)

In a fairly recent change, Spector Pro now allows you to install a remote viewer module on a second computer, but only so long as it's within your own home network.

Though not as accessible as WebWatcher, which offers remote viewing via a secure website where recorded data is housed for your viewing, this secondary in-house license was one of the best things SpectorSoft could have done in our opinion.

For users who want remote viewing outside of their home network, SpectorSoft offers another computer monitoring suite, eBlaster, that offers remote monitoring via email.

Unfortunately, to enjoy all the benefits of Spector Pro plus remote monitoring, buyers would need to go with both programs, an alternative we find a bit too pricey.

Spector Pro does stealth very well.

It's invisible whenever you turn it on, and can't be detected or turned off by anyone except the most sophisticated of users.

Furthermore, it didn't noticeably slow our test machines in testing, where a noticeable slowdown may clue someone in they're being monitored.

To aid its stealthiness (among other things), it launches from an unusual startup location, and it doesn't show up in the Task Manager, Control Panel, or Add/Remove Programs, in case tech savvy users are looking for it.

Spector Pro offers free tech support, including email and/or phone support, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Most impressive.

But how well do they take care of customers?

In our experience, they're quite good about helping buyers who need a hand with their program.

Given the importance of what keyloggers and monitoring software are about, when you're running monitoring software, it must work when you need it to. Period.

Aside from being reliable and easy-to-use to begin with, the SpectorSoft tech team did a great job handling support requests, which leads us to believe that while it's unlikely something will go wrong with it, if it does, they'll help you figure it out.

Overall we like Spector Pro. In fact, we love it.

It offers some of the best computer monitoring tools we've ever seen. Among other things it has excellent stealth, a very powerful keylogger, excellent website monitoring capabilities, and very useful screenshots.

We'd just like to see some improvement with their remote viewing capabilities and ease of website blocking.

A significant percentage of folks using keylogger software and general computer monitoring software are likely to find, at least once in a while, that they wish they had remote data viewing.

Thus, we view it as not an option but an integral part of monitoring software.

With all of the other features in Spector Pro, more complete remote viewing and website blocking are the only two components that are in any way lacking.

Because of the lack of a complete remote monitoring solution and since Spector Pro focuses more on monitoring and less on blocking sites before access to inappropriate materials has happened, these things hurt Spector's overall rank and drop Spector's rank.

We feel that because many parents and employers would prefer that inappropriate materials aren't accessed at all.

That said, not everyone needs blocking; they need monitoring. So, for those who don't need blocking (or don't mind blocking materials after the fact), Spector Pro is a powerful and professional program and a great choice as a keylogger and an overall computer monitoring program.