Enhancement Keylogger Application for Parental Control and Monitor Children's Activities

Abstract

The Nowadays, keylogger has been used widely for malicious purposes, such as stealing passwords and credit card details. A keylogger also has benefits when used legally in terms of ethical purposes where parents can use a keylogger to monitor their children's activity on the Internet. However, the existing keylogger is overlooked because it lacks a screenshot function, webcam capture function, and persistence function. Besides that, the keyloggers mostly log all keystrokes typed on the target computer even though it is not an inappropriate word. Therefore, it is not convenient for parents to monitor everything typed by the children even though it is not an inappropriate word. Since online classes have been implemented in most schools because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, this project proposed an enhancement of a software-based keylogger with a screenshot function, webcam capture function, and persistence function for parents to monitor the children's online activities daily on the Internet. It is also logging only the inappropriate word typed on the target computer in a text file. This project methodology consists of 3 stages which are design, development, and testing stages. Based on the functionality test result, parents had received three attachments on the email when the software detected the inappropriate word typed on the target computer. The three attachments consist of a text file, a screenshot image, and a webcam capture image. Besides, the text file consists of the inappropriate word that has been detected by the software while the screenshot image displays the children's computer screen display in the form of .jpg format and the webcam capture image that displays the children’s behaviors in a .png format. It can also keep the software executed in a hidden mode by enabling the persistence function even after the operating system is rebooting. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed software, this project gets feedbacks from 30 parents and based on the feedback it shows that this software is user-friendly and helps parent in monitoring their children’s online activities. In conclusion, this software can help parents take a much better approach to today's monitoring needs, especially during this pandemic, where parents are busy working from home.