Legality of keyloggers

[Sukhoi]

I think they're called keyloggers...I'm talking about the programs that run in the backround and record every keystroke made on the computer.

Is it legal for a public schoool to run a keylogger on its computers without notifying the students? My school is doing so to catch kids that are messing with the computers, and I want to make sure it's ok for the school to do that.

 

[Chooie]

Public or provate school?

 

[yakko]

Just make sure the last thing you type is format c: /u

 

[CyberSax]

Why wouldn't it be legal? It's their computers, not yours. I'm sure if you and your buddies didn't look at porn all day or try to card stuff or whatever, there would be no need for security programs 😛

A lot of colleges have them too, FYI.

 

[slicksilver]

I wonder what the kids will do when they come to know about it.....you also got to consider the implications, since it logs passwords and other info it it can be very intruding....it's like you are stealing a password(because you are doing this without their knowledge)....I think you should tell that students that they are being watched and not to fool around......

Raj

 

[glenn1]

I'm pretty sure it's legal. You are, after all, in a public place, and in reality what they are doing is monitoring your actions. The same way it's legal if they were to put a surveillance camera in the hallway, or for police to do a search of your trash can, if it's not physically located on your property.

Guess that means no more pr0n for you at school, young man 😉

 

[Sukhoi]

I wasn't doing anything bad. 🙂 I guess the comp lab is on the same network as the office, so kids were trying to hack into the office or something. Thanks for the replies

 

[downhiller80]

lol.

I remember when I was at A-level college I started writing a program that would, under my log-on mimic the winNT log-on screen & then just give some error message or something after passwords had been typed in.

I didn't intend to do anything malicious with this, I was foolish & young and why? Because I could . . .

That week someone else did EXACTLY the same thing (my code wasn't quite finished, I was just a newbie). He then used the info to logon as "finance" and was promptly expelled from college.

I decided not to pursue my project . . .

Seb

 

[pastee]

It doesn't seem legal to me. I mean, you have your right to free speech....and monitoring all your 'speech' doesn't really seem too free....

overall, seems crappy to me.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

<< It doesn't seem legal to me. I mean, you have your right to free speech....and monitoring all your 'speech' doesn't really seem too free.... >>



It's perfectly legal for them to log keystokes. It's not your property so they can do anything they want to to monitor you while on the computer. Because if you hack into NSA computers or something they can say who it was.

Also, while on school grounds as a student. You are a ward of the school and they have certain powers that they can impose on you.

 

[CyberSax]

If they didn't selectively log keystrokes at computer labs at Universities, schools, etc., there would probably be billions of dollars worth of lawsuits against these institutions from consumers groups and credit card companies because so many people would abuse the anonymity of a public computer to card stuff.

Don't want your actions logged? Use your own computer then dammit 😛

 

[Pastfinder]

I think it is unconstitutional, but then again students should be prevented from viewing smut and and vile matter on the internet, else another bunch of kids get the bright idea to blow away there classmates because they learned how to do it on the internet.

 

[kranky]

It is legal.

The ironic thing is that they probably have no desire to do it, but because people keep &quot;messing with the computers&quot;, they have no choice.

If I ran a school, I think the way I'd do it is to announce at the beginning of the year that every computer works perfectly today. If a computer gets trashed because of someone screwing around with it, it will not be fixed. So if the students want to have computers available, they shouldn't mess with them. I'd use the money that was saved to buy additional computers. That way if people don't mess with them, there's more computers for everyone.