Internet Monitoring - Cloud Based
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I wouldn't trust employees entirely either. There is always risk of the odd rogue. I trialled Webroot's Web Security last year which was ok. IIRC you install an agent on the client and there is a web-based portal which gives you all sorts of info. I can't recall if it goes into specific details of individual websites visited or summarises it as 'social media', 'streaming' etc etc.
I've also trialled GFI's web based filter, which again was ok.
Both had minor issues and niggles, to the extent that I decided the benefits weren't worth the cost. I sometimes review, when requested, user's internet history using a utility from Nirsoft. I mainly just use it to report back to the board that there is no internet abuse and they don't need to worry.
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Are you using IEHistoryView? I'm assuming it doesn't work if a user clears their cache?
Does it work on a network?
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Correct. It works over a network to view a remote computer's IE history. If the user deletes their history, then it won't work. In that scenario, I expect I would become suspicious as to why the user was deleting their history.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Correct. It works over a network to view a remote computer's IE history. If the user deletes their history, then it won't work. In that scenario, I expect I would become suspicious as to why the user was deleting their history.
Can you selectively delete IE history entries? I've not tried it but could they do that?
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Correct. It works over a network to view a remote computer's IE history. If the user deletes their history, then it won't work. In that scenario, I expect I would become suspicious as to why the user was deleting their history.
Can you selectively delete IE history entries? I've not tried it but could they do that?
Pretty sure you could.
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@Breffni-Potter yeah, you can.
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Hmm thought so, I guess that makes history tracking unreliable as you'd only see the decent sites, unless you had them logged off the machine. elsewhere.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What do you want to be monitoring? Have you looked at Alertra (what monitors ML), New Relic, Scout?
Web sites visits and how long visited...with options to monitor applications open and for how long in use or idle...
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@garak0410 said:
Web sites visits and how long visited...with options to monitor applications open and for how long in use or idle...
Did you check out RescueTime?
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@Dashrender said:
Are you using IEHistoryView? I'm assuming it doesn't work if a user clears their cache?
Does it work on a network?
Doesn't work if they are using an incognito mode either. Or if they are using a different browser. A lot of people use incognito these days as a general practice and not because they are doing something that they should not. Just because people are suspicious of being tracked.
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What about something like SpectorSoft?
What do you want this information to tell you? Applications being opened doesn't mean anything other than they were running. If the users know that this is a metric, they will leave apps open 24x7. Many of us do this already anyway.
For tracking web traffic, just use a proxy server. But, like most things involving user tracking, other than playing politics there is little technical benefit to this.
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We used an el-cheapo program called TRACK4WIN and it did a decent job of tracking website visited, time spent on them and also what applications (Excel, AutoCAD, etc.) they used and how long active and idle. It was just causing some weird network issues with another application on our network.
I've looked at SpectorSoft in the past but it was just too expensive, which is why we went with Track4Win. We still own the Track4Win license and software but I'm just afraid to set it up again as it caused continual problems that we never could figure out (in another post about FILE ACCESS DENIED)...
I can look into a proxy server but management also liked the time spent in apps/websites.
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@garak0410 said:
I can look into a proxy server but management also liked the time spent in apps/websites.
How does it determine the amount of time spent versus the amount of time running? How does it know which part of the screen is being read, for example?
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@Aaron-Studer said:
@garak0410 said:
Web sites visits and how long visited...with options to monitor applications open and for how long in use or idle...
Did you check out RescueTime?
I checked it out but it seemed more suited for the individual rather than several employees.
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@StrongBad said:
@Dashrender said:
Are you using IEHistoryView? I'm assuming it doesn't work if a user clears their cache?
Does it work on a network?
Doesn't work if they are using an incognito mode either. Or if they are using a different browser. A lot of people use incognito these days as a general practice and not because they are doing something that they should not. Just because people are suspicious of being tracked.
Really? I never use it unless I need to login to two accounts to the same website. I don't see how incognito would really stop any tracking. Maybe some cookies, but those are easy enough to stop anyway.
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Incognito mode does not maintain an on disk history. When the browser closes, there is nothing to report from.
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@StrongBad said:
Incognito mode does not maintain an on disk history. When the browser closes, there is nothing to report from.
Yes, but tracking is rarely (an really never should be) done from the browser level.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@StrongBad said:
Incognito mode does not maintain an on disk history. When the browser closes, there is nothing to report from.
Yes, but tracking is rarely (an really never should be) done from the browser level.
The comment it was in reference to was using a history viewer to track.
