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Snooper of the Month
XPCSpy from X Software
| The Snooper of the Month review is a monthly article reviewing a new piece of snoopware. All reviews are written by Jerry Nicean of Trapware. |
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XPCSpy from X Software - The XPCSpy
snooper logs all the information most user's would want and it presents
the information in an easy to read and browse format. XPCSpy makes
it extremely easy to have the snooper email its log files. For those
of you in the market for a snooping program, XPCSpy is a good one
to consider.
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October 2002 - XPCSpy (version 1.3) records keystrokes,
visited web sites, application activity, and it will take screenshots
of your PC. XPCSpy can generate report files in both HTML and text
format. In addition, XPCSpy can be configured to send log reports
via email to an email address entered through its administration
interface.
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| After it is installed, XPCSpy from X Software is not visible in the task list, nor is there any icon visible in the system tray. The XPCSpy user interface appears when a user enters the hotkey. The default hotkey is "ctrl + alt + X". |
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The general user interface screen (Figure 1) lists
the available logs of information. A user can create a report or
delete records from a particular log from the general user interface
screen. The file size of the log file is displayed at the top of
the screen.
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Figure 1. General User Interface
Screen of XPCSpy
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| By clicking on "Log View" (on the left hand side of the general user interface screen shown in Figure 1), a user is taken to the log view interface (Figure 2.) The log view interface lists all of the logged information. A user can browse only certain types of logged events by using the buttton along the top of the log view interface. For example, to view only logged keystrokes, a user may click on the "Keystrokes" radio button. As shown in Figure 2, a user may selectively few the following different types of logged information: keystrokes, web sites, applications, screenshots and XPCSpy actions. |
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Figure 2. Log View User Interface
Screen of XPCSpy
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| By clicking on "Settings" (on the left hand side of the user interface screens), a user is taken to the settings interface (Figure 3.) The settings interface enables a user to change the hotkey for bringing up the XPCSpy user interface. A user can also enable or disable the different types of events that XPCSpy logs. The different categories of logging that a user can turn on/off are (a) keystrokes, (b) web sites visited, (c) programs executed, (d) screen captures, and (e) XPCSpy actions. Regarding keystrokes, the settings interface also enables a user to only record character and number keys, rather than all keystrokes typed. Most users will probably want to select to only record character and number keys to make the keystroke logs a little more readable. Similar to the keystroke setting, there is also a screenshot setting that sets the time interval between screenshots taken by XPCSpy and the quality of the image. |
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Figure 3. Settings Interface
of XPCSpy
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| The advanced settings interface (Figure 4) gives the user additional settings and features. In the advanced settings window a user may set a password for accessing the program. The autostart and scheduling options are also configured through the advanced settings interface. XPCSpy can be configured to automatically start with the computer or to start at a scheduled time. The final feature available through the advanced settings window is the option to have log files sent via email. This email feature was very easy to use. A user simply checks which logs he or she wants sent and then enters the destination email address. Other snoopers require more information and setup time for this email feature. X Software has done an excellent job at making this feature easy to use for every-day users. The user can select to have the report that is emailed either in text format or in HTML format. |
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Figure 4. Advanced Settings
Interface of XPCSpy
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The screenshots taken by XPCSpy can be viewed through
XPCSpy's screenshot log viewer. All of the screenshots can be viewed
in a reduced size format by clicking on a navigation arrow to scroll
through all of the screenshots. Each screenshot can be enlarged
to the size of the desktop by clicking on the full size button.
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The XPCSpy documentation states that it is Windows
98/ME/NT/2000/XP compatible. The test computer we used to try XPCSpy
was running Windows 98. XPCSpy ran fine on our system and didn't
seem to slow down the system at all when it was taking screenshots.
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| For those of you who would like to try XPCSpy, you can download a trial from X Software's web site. The free trial of XPCSpy runs for only 30 minutes per session. The file to download was a little over one megabyte (1.14 MB). If you're interested in purchasing XPCSpy, the registration fee was $39.95 (US). The order page also indicated that X Software plans to provide free technical support and free lifetime upgrades. |
| X Software, the makers of XPCSpy, seem to be relatively new in the snooper market. From their web site it appears that they came onto the snooping scene sometime last year (in 2001). |
| Overall, XPCSpy performed very well on our system. The XPCSpy snooper logs all the information most user's would want and it presents the information in an easy to read and browse format. The feature that allows the snooper to email its log files to an email address was extremely easy to set up and use. We have not seen a snooper that made this feature any easier to configure. For those of you in the market for a snooping program, XPCSpy is a good one to consider. |
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