Monitoring Instant Messaging and Chat Programs

Roughly 75% of teens who regularly use the internet use instant messaging programs whereas, in comparison, roughly 45% of adults who regularly use the internet have used these programs. Clearly, instant messaging and chat programs are amongst the most popular communication tools available. You probably already know this. What you may not know, is that it is entirely possible to monitor the communications within instant messaging programs. Whether it’s seeing who who your children are chatting with and chatting about, whether it’s protecting your children from online predators, whether it’s keeping an eye on the online conversations of your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, roomate, employees, or students, all of this information can be monitored, recorded, and saved.

If you want to monitor instant messaging programs on a computer, what you’ll have to do is install software that has this capability. When searching for this software, keep in mind that there are several different instant messaging programs such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MySpace IM, AOL Instant Messenger, etc… So make sure it can monitor the chat programs used on the computer that you will be monitoring.

Most software that handles chat monitoring will also have the ability to monitor other things such as email, web sites, keystrokes, screen shots, etc…

If you want more information about chat monitoring and computer monitoring software, check out our computer monitoring software review site where we compare and review of popular computer monitoring software.