Canada Computes
Lab Test: Stealth, smoke, and steel
By Dave Chappelle

"There are no signs anywhere that eBlaster is installed on a computer. It doesn't appear in the program files or uninstall software. Few users are aware of the existence of the Windows Registry; but we looked thoroughly and found nothing. It has to be in there somewhere, but eBlaster hides very well. Reports are sent to you with a bogus reply address, preventing a report from returning to the subject computer and possibly alerting the user.

Shouldn't your anti-virus program block an eBlaster installation? SpectorSoft says McAfee and Norton anti-virus programs won't stop even a remote installation of eBlaster, because the file is not a virus. Grisoft AVG was installed on our test system, yet eBlaster breezed right past it. Two separate spyware detection applications couldn't detect eBlaster."

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May 9, 2003

InfoWorld
SpectorSoft Simplifies Snooping
Every word they type, every link they click, SpectorSoft Professional and eBlaster 3.0 will be watching.
By Curtis Franklin Jr.

"Being nosy can be good for business. Although workplace privacy has become a hot-button issue for many unions and employee-rights groups, there are many legitimate reasons for an organization to want to know what’s happening on its computers. From industrial espionage, to sabotage, and workplace harassment suits, it’s not hard to understand the strong financial incentives that may exist for keeping tabs on employees' workstations.

SpectorSoft offers a pair of products that allow an IT department to observe virtually all activity on individual workstations. Spector Professional Edition and e-Blaster 3.0 are separate solutions to a common problem. Each offers an inexpensive way to monitor the actions and data running through a computer’s keyboard and screen."

Read the Full Review Online

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May 2003

Kick Start News
Review: eBlaster 3.0
By Jeff Matthews

Pros: eBlaster is a powerful, comparatively inexpensive package which allows you to not only record keystrokes but also monitor many things such as all web sites visited and all incoming and outgoing e-mail. eBlaster will always keep you notified at predetermined intervals about what is going on.

Read the Full Review Online

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April 25, 2003

The Washington Times
Suspicious mates on e-mail trail
By Lara Naaman

"If all is fair in love and war, cyberspace is becoming a new battleground. People aren't using the Internet just to find love anymore; they're using it to catch wayward lovers.

With a little bit of creativity and, on occasion, some moderately priced software, suspicious partners can become their own private investigators or, more simply put, e-mail spies."

The Washington Times examines how Spector Pro and eBlaster are helping spouses take control of their relationships by learning the truth... "They find e-mails; they find an adulterous relationship. People are getting really good at searching where people have been on the Internet."

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March 11, 2003

AM Canada
Cyber Spying On Your Teen

"Ever wonder what your teenager is doing online? New software allows you to monitor their email and Internet activities without their knowledge. Meet a mother and the teenage daughter she electronically spied on."

A SpectorSoft customer discusses how she uses Spector Pro to monitor her teenage daughters online activity.

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February 12, 2003

The Wall Street Journal
For Some Married People, Internet Dating Has Draw
By JENNIFER SARANOW

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January 14, 2003

NBC Today Show
Keeping Your Child Safe Online

Spectorsoft products eBlaster and Spector Pro are discussed on the Today Show as Internet Monitoring products that help parents protect their children online.

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January 13, 2003

Tech TV
Kids Under Surveillance

"His tool for online surveillance is eBlaster, a software system manufactured by Florida-based SpectorSoft.

Mark receives an email every 90 minutes when his son is online at home. The message is a detailed transcript of every email, chat conversation, and website Jonathan has visited, giving him an all-access pass to his son's online jaunts.

"In my opinion," Mark says, "teen-agers don't have the rights that an adult has. They don't have the knowledge, they don't have the maturity. So I look at it as monitoring him."

The spyware, hidden on the hard drive where even Mark can't locate it, records every keystroke. Its whereabouts stumps the teen-ager.

"I know it's encrypted because I've tried to hack into it," Jonathan says.

For eBlaster users, the transcript is accessible anywhere email is accessible -- via computer, Blackberry pager, or PDA.

SpectorSoft CEO Doug Fowler calls this constant observing "good parenting."

"Just in the same way that it's important for parents to know that this child is going outside the home to a neighbor's house or to the movies or to school, it's important for them to know where they're going on the Internet," Fowler says.

Read the Full Story Online

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January 6, 2003

MSNBC
Workers' Web Habits Are No Secret
By MICHELLE SWAFFORD

"Your employer probably knows if you make a bid on eBay, check your bank account, book airline tickets, e-mail a friend or send instant messages to co-workers. They probably know how often and for how long you surf the Internet and what keys you type in Microsoft Word and other software programs.

That's right, employers are increasingly monitoring employees with a handful of "spyware" programs.

Vero Beach, Fla.-based SpectorSoft Corp. has two software programs - eBlaster and Spector Pro - available for companies to monitor employees or parents to monitor their children's computer activities.

Spector Pro records everything for viewing later while eBlaster tracks everything and then e-mails a report of the computer's activity to a designated person. Both programs can monitor e-mails, Internet use, instant messaging and word processing programs.

"It really gives you a very complete picture of what's going on because it's like you were sitting there," said Kasey Sellati, SpectorSoft's spokeswoman.

Sellati said SpectorSoft's customers use the software to make sure employees aren't wasting time, saying inappropriate things or giving out confidential information.

"Our goal overall is not to really block, but to arm people with the information about what's going on in the computer and to let people be able to monitor themselves," she said.

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January 9, 2003

The Wall Street Journal
New Tools Let Parents Become Keystroke-by-Keystroke Spys
by Michelle Higgins

"Public-relations executive Robbie Vorhaus arrives at his New York office, fires up the computer and opens one of his most important e-mails of the day: Not a client crisis or big new account -- it is a report on what his eight-year-old son Connor has been doing online.

The report, which lands in Mr. Vorhaus's e-mail once a week, tells him everything he wants to know about his son's activities on the Web, including who he's been chatting with and what sites he visited. "It's kind of creepy," says Connor.

In the age-old battle between independence-seeking kids and Type A parents, the older generation is packing some new weapons. A slew of powerful new software tools are available, including some that make it possible for you to track online chats and instant messages practically in real time, even if you are in a different city or using a BlackBerry.

The result is a wave of clever products that enable parents to monitor more of what their kids are doing online. The latest version of SpectorSoft Corporations' eBlaster software, for instance, can capture a child's incoming and outgoing e-mails and can immediately forward some or all of the text to a parent."

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September 2002

On Computers (Syndicated Technology Newspaper Column)
Spy, CounterSpy
By Bob Schwabach

"The latest snooping software from SpectorSoft is "eBlaster," a hidden program that not only watches every keystroke on someone else's computer but automatically records and forwards their email to the watcher.

SpectorSoft is one of a handful of companies that make what might be called surveillance software. The target market is business and the stated objective is for a manager to see what the employees actually do when they are at the company computers. Are they working or are they playing dungeons and dragons. (Lest you think this is too paranoid, it's worth noting that a study of Internet use by the U.S. Treasury Department found that over half of all Internet use by employees of the Internal Revenue Service was for personal, not job-related, reasons.)

Once installed, "eBlaster" records all keystrokes, emails (received and sent), chat room conversations, instant messaging and web sites visited. Within seconds it sends this information to an email address of your choosing. If you don't want to spend your time pouring over all this stuff -- and who does? -- an activity summary is sent once an hour or once a day."

Read the Full Story Online

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August 29, 2002

MSNBC.com
Who’s spying on my Hotmail?
With new spyware, even your private Yahoo, Hotmail e-mails can be seen
by Bob Sullivan

Think using Yahoo or Hotmail e-mail at work protects you from your boss’ prying eyes? Think again. New spy software essentially lets employers or parents co-pilot virtually any kind of e-mail account, including private Web-based e-mail accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail. A new version of eBlaster spyware will secretly forward all e-mail coming and going through such Web-based accounts to a spy’s e-mail, allowing anyone to “ride-along” even the supposedly private e-mail.

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July 2002

PC Magazine - Editors' Choice
Watching You, Watching Me - July Cover Story
by Karen J. Bannan

It started at General Dynamics Corp. with a customer complaint. About a year ago, Chauncey Morris, a regional supervisor with the government contractor, got a call from a client. Apparently, one of General Dynamics' field technicians wasn't spending his days fixing problems. "The customer complained that the tech wasn't working," says Morris. "Instead, he was sitting in a cubicle, messing around with chat programs."

Morris had already noticed the employee's cellular-phone and pager bills skyrocketing a few months earlier. Given that training a new technician would cost $10,000 to $15,000, however, Morris decided to see for himself what the putative loafer was up to before making any rash decisions. Morris asked the technician to send his laptop to the main office, claiming that it needed a software update. Once Morris had the computer, he installed SpectorSoft's eBlaster—an application that records every keystroke, Web site, and chat session, then e-mails detailed reports back to a remote e-mail address.

Within a day, Morris received his first set of e-mailed logs. "He was having an affair. He was spending hours in chat rooms and sending e-mails," says Morris, who reminded the employee of the company's acceptable-use policy.

If you think this scenario is unique, think again. More than 14 million Americans are under continual electronic surveillance by their employers, who not only watch e-mail, chats, and Web traffic but also look into employee files, according to a July 2001 report issued by the Privacy Foundation, a Denver-based advocacy group.

Read the Full Review at PCMag.com

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January, 2002

SmartComputing
Whose Shoulder Are You Looking Over?
by Michael Sweet

SpectorSoft has two products for spying on your loved ones: Spector and eBlaster. You can use these products to monitor employees in a small business. These programs record all activity, such as keystrokes, Web sites visited, e-mails, instant messages, and chat room conversations, on the computer in which they’re installed. Spector takes screen shots of the image on the computer screen and stores them so you can view them later. You can adjust the interval between screen shots, which can be as frequent as once every second. Once you type the password, Spector is disabled so you can access the stored data.

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December 17, 2001

TechTV.com
Review: SpectorSoft eBlaster
By Ray Weigel

If keeping an eye on things from a remote location is of paramount importance, SpectorSoft's eBlaster should be at the top of your list. This software goes into deep hiding on the computer on which it's installed. It secretly monitors such information as which programs have been running, how long they've been actively in use, and which keystrokes were typed. The biggest plus to this electronic snooping is that once a full report has been compiled, it's sent via email from the suspect computer without the user's knowledge.

Read the Full Review at TechTV.com

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November 26, 2001

Washingon Post
eBlaster, The V-Chip's Tougher Big Brother
By Laura Sessions Stepp

Now we can add one more weapon to our arsenal, a next generation of the software known as spyware. eBlaster, as it's called, enables parents to check the Web sites young Caitlin and Caleb visit, whom they talk to online and what they say -- from any remote location. Worried at work -- or on a business trip out of town -- when your kid's at home after school? No problem. Once eBlaster is installed on a home computer, it records all Web sites visited, all applications launched, all keystrokes typed and sends an activity report to a specified e-mail address as frequently as every 30 minutes.

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July 2, 2001

Time
Internet Insecurity
By Adam Cohen

What can you expect if someone puts SpectorSoft's Spector 2.2 on your computer? It will secretly take hundreds of snapshots an hour of every website, chat group and e-mail that appears on your screen, and store them so that the special someone who is spying on you can review them later. A new product, SpectorSoft's eBlaster, will send the spy detailed e-mail reports updating your computer activities as often as every 30 minutes. These products work in stealth mode, so the people being spied on are totally unaware.

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March 19, 2001

Fortune
Top 10 Tech Trends to Bet On
By Eric Nee & Peter H. Lewis

The End of Privacy:
A man in Memphis secretly installed a spyware program called Spector on his 13- year-old stepdaughter's personal computer last fall and discovered, by reading her private e-mail, that she was having sex with her 37-year-old schoolteacher.

Click here to read the Full Story

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March 17, 2001

NBC Nightly News

On March 17, NBC aired an article which showed various ways that parents keep track of where their children are and what they are up to.

The segment discussed how parents are using monitoring tools to find out exactly what their children are doing on the Internet. A parent who uses Spector talked about how he uses the software.

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March 17-18, 2001

CNNdotCOM
"Is your computer being monitored?"
By Kristyn Martin

It's called snoopware and it allows snooping into someone's computer to monitor their every movement -- including read their e-mail and watching their chat rooms sessions.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/tools.snoopware/index.htmll

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March 13, 2001

SmartMoney
Working: Spies Like Us
By Anne Kadet and Noah Rothbaum

Suspect that someone's been burrowing through your hard drive at night? Install Spector 2.1 ($69.95; www.spectorsoft.com) to find out for sure.

http://www.smartmoney.com/consumer/index.cfm?story=spies

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March 8, 2001

Family PC
Tools That Tame the Net
By Samuel Greengard and Edward Mendelson

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February 19, 2001

Maclean's
"Do You Know Who's Watching You?"
By Chris Wood with Brenda Branswell

It could be your boss, your government, your spouse, or a sexual creep. As technology explodes, the law can't keep up.

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February 9, 2001 (Originally aired December 15, 2000)

TechTV - CyberCrimes Show
"Using Computers to Catch a Cheat "

If you suspected your spouse or significant other was cheating on you, what lengths would you go to learn the truth?

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November 20, 2000

Business Week
"A Nightmare for E-Adulterers"

Featured in the e.biz section of Business Week.

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November 6, 2000

Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal had a page one feature on various ways parents monitor their children's whereabouts and activities.

Spector software was discussed as a way for parents to monitor their children's Internet activities.

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October 4, 2000

Ricki Lake
"CYBERSEX ADDICTS.COM."

Featured on the syndicated television talk show Ricki Lake (airing on Wednesday, October 4).

On today's "Ricki," family members confront loved ones they say are addicted to cybersex. A mother of four is accused of being online for more than 20 hours a day! Her son says her kids are being neglected because of her obsession with the web. Another guest is surprised to learn that his web room "chat" partner is only 17 years old! The girl's mother is less than pleased with her daughter's web friend, and both the mother and the daughter demand that he leave her alone! Ricki gets web friendly and tries to determine who is using the web for innocent fun, and who is an addict.

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September 29, 2000

NewsWeek Online
"Suspicions Confirmed"
By Diane Anderson

Products: Corporate snooping software finds an unintended market— spouses in search of cheaters...

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September 18, 2000

The Industry Standard
"Suspicious Minds"
By Diane Anderson

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September 13, 2000

Los Angeles Times
"Big Brother Is Tapping Your Cheating eHeart"
By Libby Copeland

Featured on Page 2 of the Style section.

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September 12, 2000

The Dr. Laura Show
"When is an Affair an Affair?"

Spector and Spectorsoft president Doug Fowler featured on the syndicated television talk show "Dr. Laura".

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August 21, 2000

ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings
ABC Television Network

A Spector user is filmed talking about how she discovered that her husband was cheating on her.

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August 9, 2000

Good Morning America
ABC Television Network

SpectorSoft user Greg Young talks about how he discovered his wife engaging in online affairs.

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August 8, 2000

Washington Post
"Cyber-Snooping Into A Cheating Heart"
By Libby Copeland

Featured on Page 1 of the Style section. Read the article online at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5Aug7.html

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July 5, 2000

Boston Globe
"THE SPIES AMONG US ARE A KEYBOARD AWAY"
By Alex Pham

Feature Article on Cyber Cheating.

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July 3, 2000

San Francisco Examiner
"Spector software lets parents, employers, spouses monitoreverything happening on a host computer."
By Alan T. Saracevic

Read the article online at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/2000/07/03/

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June 22, 2000

New York Times
"Spy Software Puts Home PC's Under Surveillance"
By Peter Lewis

The New York Times features Spector in its weekly Technology column called "Circuits".

In this article, a woman who used Spector to prove that her husband was cheating attributed Spector to "saving her life".

"I have no sympathy for people who would try to claim that two wrongs don't make a right," said the woman in Nashville who spied on her husband. "Spector helped save my life. How dare anyone say to me that what I did was wrong? When you're searching for truth and your spouse is doing everything he can to cover up, you depend on programs like Spector."