Keylogger
What are key loggers and keystroke loggers

Someone knows what you are typing !

What ever you are typing.. your chats, your private emails, passwords, credit card numbers, the URLs you type. on your computer keyboard can be easily read by another person. How? With the help of a keylogger.. Are your typing under surveillance? Read more to protect your privacy.

Now a days companies, individuals and even the governments are using software to keep an eye on your activities in the cyber world. If you are working in a private firm and you read private emails at work, you are most likely to be caught with the exact letters you type or the exact chat lingo you use. If you are a spouse, your partner may be just "checking" whether you are keeping your good manners in the digital world also. The software that enables your company or your spouse or your parents to keep an eye on your "window to the world" is called the spyware or the snoopware.

One such essential spyware is the Keylogger or the keystroke logger. With these small and stealth programs, capturing your keystrokes is easier than you expect. Key loggers capture all the keys that you type in, and write it to a secret logging file. Later some one can inspect these keystroke logging files to see and detect what ever you had typed in on your keyboard.

Keylogger Let us see how a keystroke logger works.

• Keyloggers are generally very small programs capable of running as a background process in your PC. Hence keystroke loggers work transparently to normal users. Keyloggers cannot be found in the CTRL+ALT+DEL list. Key stroke loggers can also disguise in some other name, which an average computer user may identify as a critical Operating System Process.
  
• Keylstrokeoggers employ a system wide hook for the keyboard. It receive intimations whenever he user presses a key. When ever a keystrokelogger receives such an intimation, it identifies the key pressed, and writes to a logg file that is concealed in the harddisk.
  
• Key loggers may optionally send emails with the logged keys to a configurable email address.
  
• Keystrokelogger software can configure themselves to startup while the windows startup, and start monitoring your keystrokes as soon as you start typing.

There are some versions of keyloggers that don't take explicit steps to hide itself from the user. It tells the user about the activity being monitored. Such keystroke logger programs can be called monitoring software and does not logically gets included in the spyware category of key loggers that record each and every keystrokes you make.

Even though the keyloggers are vastly being misused, there are certain instances when the key stroke logger programs can be helpful.

• Keystroke logger programs can be used to check whether the children are not misusing the Internet.
  
• Keystrokelogger can be used to make sure your computer is not being used by anybody else when you are away.
  
• Keyloggers can be used to track employee activity during working hours.

Even though keystroke loggers can be used in situations like these, most of the key loggers are being abused and now a days majority of the keyloggers are used to spy computer users. So its better to make sure you don't have keyloggers installed in your computer. Are you being spied?