The oldest method is to hire a private investigator. Even if this is a little bit expensive, is the most comfortable for the person in case because no activity related is required. An important think to take in consideration when you hire a spy agent is its investigator license. Ask for it, to be certified that he is part of a legitimate detective firm.

Telephone recording it is also a very popular method. It’s easy and cost effective. If few years ago the technology was not the best card, well these days there are hundreds of devices that can record the conversation. More than that, for mobiles, there are spy programs that can be installed and record not only the conversation but even the messages.

Vehicle tracker, the third category of spy methods in my post, refers to systems that can track the vehicles. The most used is the GPS which will provide you the exact location of your husband, in any time.

The last category, I dedicate it to computer spy. Indifferent the activity you want to record, e-mail send or receive, chat conversations, websites visited, these can be recorded with a hardware / software keylogger. This is also a very cost effective method. Usually the recorded information can be sent to an e-mail address specified by the user.

Even if these seems strange for you, there are many people ready to implement one of this methods only to find out if they are being cheated or to regain their confidence.

At home

1. Keep an eye on children. I’m not talking about invading privacy, but there should be a certain level of surveillance because kids are not aware of online dangers and can easily post private information over the Internet or sharing it to friends they meet online.
2. Social networks are the second reason why I consider monitoring a “must do”. Have you ever asked if your child has a profile on one of this networks and what’s doing online? Recently more and more teens are caught posting improper photos of themselves over the Internet. Can you imagine your child doing the same?
3. Your computer freezes periodically. The way your wife / husband or child is using technology might give you head aches. If you periodically need to clean your home system of spyware, adware and occasionally, other forms of malware it’s clear that someone is using the computer in an improper way. And God knows what websites are being viewed.
   

At work

4. For justification in front of your boss. If your colleague had made a bad joke in a bad moment and you need a justification, than a log file with your activity might help you.
5. Backup your work. Even if it’s difficult to believe it, a key logger might help you to recover your work in case you have deleted it or lost it. For example, once while I was writing a document, my MS Word frozen (it was not set to auto -save) and my whole work was doomed.
6. Maximize productivity. If your job means working on computer, it’s difficult to remain focus for 8 hours. In most cases we are interrupted from our work by a friend sending us a funny joke, by friend’s tweets and stumble toolbar. A detailed analyze at the end of the day, based on reports provided by the key logger will show you how productivity you were or how much time you spend online.
   

If you share computer with others

7. Just because you share computer with others. If I own the computer and some friends need to use it I would tell them that my computer is monitored and no improper activities are allowed.
8. To see who had modified/deleted a specific file. If you have multiple accounts you can see which user has deleted or modified a specific file if no one recognizes this.
9. Printer usage abuse. If your toner is over again and none of your friends admit that has used the printer, than you can take a look at the printer usage report and see which one is lying.

I’m sure that you will find many other good reasons to use a key logger and I would like you to list them in the comments. Also if some of you had unpleasant events in regard to key logger usages please let us know your situation in the comment section.

Also new, is our affiliates page where you can find how our program works and what are your benefits. But enough with the talking (or should we say writing), visit the new All-Spy page!

But as we are no more in eighteen century and Sherlock Holmes is not here to solve any case our generation must do it by his own. Anyway it’s hard to imagine Holmes spying hackers, solving an e-crime and catching spam attackers. Things have moved forward and the global information society is rapidly evolving among with the cyberspace that has opened the door to criminals of all sorts.

Nowadays Internet and computers can lead to committing crime, online thievery, spam attacks, different online attacks, and human trafficking. But on the other side they can also provide essential evidence of all these online crimes. Electronic records such as computer network logs, e-mails, word-processing files, and picture files increasingly provide important evidence on e-crime cases, online thievery, hackers attack and any other offensive cyber activity.

Different services, associations (http://www.ophea.net/cybercops.cfm) and specific software were developed and created in order to eliminate the online threats and to assure a safe browsing and a secure online environment. There are programs specifically created for educating children about risks and safety issues associated with Internet use (http://www.otal.umd.edu/uupractice/children/). If you want to learn more on how to protect your child online, if you are looking for proper websites for children or you want to report cyber and IP crime than please find below some resources in order to find a solution and get you a helping hand:
http://www.cybercrime.gov/reporting.htm
http://www.kidsites.com/
http://applicationblocker.com/child-abuse-statistics.html

And as a proper ending for this post I found the right Holmes’ saying: “The cardinal rule of criminal detection was carved in stone more than a century ago.] It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence, … It biases the judgment.”

Many warning flags are raised when your partner is addicted to Internet pornography more than you. For one, they’ll be on their computer, possibly locked in the computer room, for several hours at a time refusing to allow you entry. Another warning sign may be that they’ve had a loss in sex drive and intimacy with you. This could be caused by the fact that Internet pornography allows them to view their fantasies and role-plays that you haven’t attempted in real life. Sex may become easily exhaustive and boring for them.

If you still aren’t sure that they are addicted to Internet porn, there are programs that can help you view what your partner has been viewing online. History scanners, keyword loggers, and several other types of software can be installed which allow you to sort and easily search for any Internet pornography sites your mate might be visiting on a regular basis. You can also check their emails to view any subscriptions they may have made to Internet porn sites. Credit card bills come in handy for this reason, too.

If you do catch your partner addicted to Internet porn, it is best to talk to them about it. There are several things you can do to turn up the pleasure in the bedroom again. Counseling is even an option for them as well. However, if you want to really stay with them, you must create a plan that works for you both, allowing flexibility and understanding while enforcing their access to Internet porn.

Visitors at your site are mostly likely to recommend it to some one else or leave comments according to your content and their purpose. If you have uploaded one site naming it medicine and have filled it with content related to football, it’s a fowl.

The content or message posts are generally read by a large audience. And the entire audience tries to keep the merit of that page on right track, generally by turning one’s logic down or by placing some stronger logic. The common phenomenon we observe of such action and reaction is that our mail box gets filled with spam and junk mail. When you type something on the Internet it goes live for the globe. Get ready if someone is on the same page and have strong arguments to place. He or she will strongly go for it. Arguments are generally placed on net with a judgmental view. These sorts of posts containing some argument with judgment get enormous response in regard to their posted contents.

“Anything you type can be used against you” – I would label this verse as an omni truth about the web. There is no traffic controlling on the web, nor any patrolling system that can protect your right over net. You have the full potentiality of being exploited.

Our objective for presenting you with this material is an informative one – pointing out different techniques used for recording web mail and IM passwords together with their advantages and disadvantages. As most of them are probably illegal we do not recommend anyone to put them in practice – rather to protect themselves from such attacks or to use them in a legal manner.

In this article we will present the last two techniques:
- Brute-Force Attack
- Social Enginiring

Brute-Force Attack

Many people are searching for software able to perform a brute-force attack. This is totally impractical. It would take hundreds of thousands of years to attempt any kind of successful or at least a reasonable brute-force attack against AOL®, Yahoo® or Hotmail® and this period of time would expand exponentially if the password is longer than the minimum required length. Increasing the number of computers and multiple sessions may reduce this time to thousands of years.

This is highly illegal as these services own the servers on which an account is targeted. Even if you are attacking or hacking your own account, you don’t own the servers. It is unlikely that you will recover a password in this way, but it is highly possible that you’d be arrested and charged for doing this action.
 
 
Social Engineering

Social engineering is the name given to the technique of attacking the person, rather than the computer, server or system. The basic principle is that many people can tricked to give someone else their personal information: id and password if they think they can trust that person. For example, someone might call you saying he was from AOL and that he was finally getting to respond to your support question. He would then ask to describe the problem that you are facing and tell you that he has a solution.

However, he just needs to verify your account and asks you to give him the username and password again. You would be surprise how many people would fall for this pretty obvious scam. In most cases this scam would be very elaborate. The more information the caller provides the more realistic the call would be. Again, never provide your password to anyone. This is a basic principal – no customer service representative will ask for this information.
 
Both techniques are highly illegal and we do not recommend you.

A possible techniques – easy to use (nor requiring extensive technique knowledge) is using a KeyLogger software application. This technique is very effective in recovering your own password or lost information and also in case you want to find out a password or sensitive information. Please note that this technique is legal only if used on your own computer.  Installing a KeyLogger on someone else computer without their knowledge is illegal. In this respect we can recommend you All-Spy KeyLogger or to visit an independent source such as: www.keylogger.org

All these are the basic methods that we are aware for hacking an e-mail or IM account or any other dial-up or on-line password. We hope this information will answer some of your questions and help you better protect against such attacks.

With the risk of repeating ourselves, we want to make it very clear, that our purpose for providing this information is NOT to encourage you to use this information to steal passwords, but rather to inform you of the risks associated with such actions and methodologies. Whatever you choose to do with these information is up to you, and we will not be responsible for any activities you perform.

In this article we will present three techniques:
- Sniffing
- Impersonation
- Keylogger

Sniffing

If two people share the same network, it may be possible for one to sniff the others’ packets as they sign-on. The traffic between your computer and the internet site you are accessing it is possible to be recorded and “played-back.”  It is not a simple technique to perform, but is possible if both computers are close to one another and they are sharing the same a hub. Again, this is illegal and we do not recommend this activity.

Impersonation

It is possible to impersonate a program on a computer by launching an application window that look like something else. For instance, let’s say you login to the MSN service and visit a website (in this case a hostile website). It would be possible for this website to pop-up some application windows that look like something very familiar. They could look almost identical to application windows that an user would expect from his local computer. Thus the user might be tricked into providing or submitting information to the hostile website. If these could trick you into entering your personal information such as user name and password, then you could end-up sending your password to the attacker. Application windows such as these could be created to imitate virtually any program or series of actions. Your browser could identify your operating system and your IP address can be identify by your ISP. In this respect a hostile website could target you with a series of screen shots that look exactly as they should on your system.

The key aspect is that the screen shots are not coming from your computer, but are coming from the hostile website. First, creating such a hostile website is fraudulent and illegal. We do not recommend anyone to perform this activity. To protect yourself against this type of attack, configure your browser for high security and activate warnings for any code that is executed on your computer.

KeyLogger

A KeyLogger is a software program or piece of hardware that records all keyboard keystrokes to an encrypted file which can then be read at a later time. It’s easy to identify the password(s) from the file later. Similar to the Trojan, this technique also requires that someone type the password. There are two main types of KeyLoggers: hardware and software.

A hardware KeyLogger can be installed or mounted between the keyboard cable and the computer and can be activated with a few keystrokes. It is then left in place until after the information you are looking to recover is typed. At a later time the equipment is removed and the file of keystrokes is examined for obtaining the password. Hardware KeyLogger is undetectable by anti-virus software.

Software KeyLogger is installed on the target computer or on your own computer and has the same function, however, it is a little bit more complex to use since it must be installed to run stealthily to be effective. A KeyLogger could be used to steal passwords or information from someone who is using an office computer or sharing a computer. It is possible that installing such a device or piece of software to be illegal depending upon whether the target has a presumption of privacy when using the computer on which the KeyLogger is installed.

In this respect we can recommend you All-Spy KeyLogger or to visit an independent source such as: www.keylogger.org

We want to make it very clear, one more time, that our purpose for providing this information is NOT to encourage you to use this information to steal passwords, but rather to inform you of the risks associated with such actions and methodologies. Whatever you choose to do with these information is up to you, and we will not be responsible for any activities you perform.

In this article we will present another two techniques:
- Locally Stored Passwords
- Trojan  
 
Locally Stored Passwords

Many browsers, including Internet Explorer, the AOL client, and Windows Dial-Up Connections allow you the option to store passwords. These passwords are stored on the local machine and (depending upon where and how it is stored) there is always a method of recovering these passwords. Storing password locally is not secure and may allow the password to be recovered by anyone who has access to the local machine. While we are not currently aware of any program to recover locally stored AOL passwords, we do not recommend that these are secure. Such software exists and can recover most of the types of locally stored passwords.

Trojan

A Trojan is usually a program that is sent to a user that allows an attacker to control functions of the target computer, get information from the target or to delete or damage files on the target. The name Trojan is given because the program will usually come attached or associated to other program or file that requires you to run it. There are many such Trojans which can be programmed to capture passwords and to email or transmit them to a third party. To protect yourself against Trojans, you should never run or download software or files that are not from a trusted or secure source.

It is very important that anyone surfing the internet to use a virus protection or Spyware detection program (which should catch most Trojans). Please note that a Trojan requires the password to be typed or stored in order to be recovered, thus is not an effective way to recover your own password. Anyway it could explain how someone could lose their password to a hacker attack. Sending someone a Trojan program is definitely illegal and we do not recommend this activity. A Trojan is not very effective in recovering a particular account password as it requires the target to install it first.

Most of the time hackers will send bulk mail Trojans to thousands of people in the hope that a small percentage will fall for it. Legitimate account holders who may have been caught by a Trojan should contact their service provider a.s.a.p. to request their account passwords to be reset.

Both Trojans and Programs design to recover locally stored passwords require some degree of technical information in order to be effective. Also sending Trojans and installing software on someone else computer to capture passwords which are stored locally is very illegal. This is why we are recommending the use of KeyLogger software on your own computer in order to record any activity – including passwords. This technique is not very effective when you want to find a password form a remote computer but taking into account that in most cases we want to discover passwords from persons close to us it could be very useful to always have KeyLogger software installed on our computer – you never know when it comes in handy.  In this respect we can recommend you one of our solution: All-Spy KeyLogger or to visit an independent source such as: www.keylogger.org

Taking into account this variety of information we have decided to put together a list of such methodologies with a short description, presenting for each technique their advantages and disadvantages, risk and threats involved. In this respect we will dedicate several articles to this subject – in each article we will present one or two such techniques.

We provide you with this information on E-mail and IM passwords recording techniques not to encourage you to use this information to steal passwords, but rather to inform you of the risks associated with such actions and methodologies. Whatever you choose to do with this information is up to you, and we will not be responsible for any activities you perform.

We have identified the following techniques:
- The Hoax
- Hiring Hackers to obtain e-mail and IM passwords
- Locally Stored Passwords
- Trojan
- KeyLogger Software
- Impersonation
- Sniffing
- Brute Force Attack
- Social Engineering
Lets start with the first:

The Hoax

The following so called technique is absolutely a hoax (meaning a fraud: something intended to deceive). There are many post messages on forums or newsgroup or web pages with something like the following (DON’T EVER FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS!!!! – IT IS A HOAX – IT WILL NOT WORK):

—————————————————————
: : : (([[THIS REALLY WORKS ]])) : : :

(1) send an E-mail to passwordrecovery@yourdomainhere.com
(2) In the subject box type the screenname of the person whose password you wish to find out
(3) In the message box type the next string: /cgi-bin/start?v703&login.USER=passmachine&class=supervisor&f={your aol password}&f=27586&javascript=ACTIVE&rsa
(4) Send the e-mail with priority set to “high”
(5) wait 2-3 minutes and check your mail
(6) Read the message.-Where YOUR password was previously typed, NOW, the password of the screenname will be there!

An automatic massage will be received from a password recovery service with the desired password.
—————————————————————–

This is just a scam to steal the password from your e-mail account. In any circumstance you should never give your password to anyone. No legitimate web service or customer service representative will ask for your password or need it. There is no magic service or email address or a sequence of commands that will reveal the passwords of users.

The easiest way in finding, monitoring and recording information in a safe manner is using key logging software which records every keystroke. It’s not only a very effective techniques but it’s also very safe and legal if you are using a KeyLogger on your computer for recording keystrokes of other users while they are using it. You can find a variety of such solutions on the market: some of them are simple and others are more complex and rich in functionalities. In this respect we can recommend you as a first stop one of our solution: All-Spy KeyLogger or to visit an independent source such as: www.keylogger.org