How safe are keyloggers?

Hello there,
I have a thirteen year old cousin who is a little know-it-all. I am concerned that she is talking to the wrong kind of people on some sites: a social site or a social site or even AIM. She is extremely gorgeous and looks much older. I am...

afraid that she might think she can trust somebody and that somebody might lead her to...well I don't think I have to explain my concern. How safe are keyloggers? WIll they affect the computer they are installed in? Will the person find out? (I want her to trust me and not push her away). And can I easily uninstall them? I appreciate this guys, and so will her dad (no Mom).
--C

to sue90: he said she is a know it all about computers...chances are if you come out and tell her hey, I'm monitoring what you're doing she'll try to figure out where the program is that is monitoring her either via the task manager, or worse yet if you tell her the name of the program all that is required is a simple google search of how do I shut down/delete/turn off [program] and boom, you've got nothing. of course, this is probably only in the event that she is actually doing something that she is not supposed to...but that is the whole point, right?

Dear celestialhunter,
There are literally hundreds of free parental tools on the internet. I've never heard that keyloggers damage a computer in anyway. The question is why don't you want her to know something is installed to monitor her??? This alone can be a good deterrent to bad behaviour. A parent shouldn't be afraid of their children's reaction to good parenting. As a parent you are responsible for their protection and that means keeping track of Internet activities, knowing where they are at all times, knowing if they are doing drugs etc. It is the parent who gets involved this way that has a child who is alive. You see children need to know that their parent is INTERFERING this will give them an excuse...such as no, I can't meet you, my father would find out and kill me. I can't smoke drugs, my father has to know where I am at all times and he'll look for me if he doesn't. No, I can't steal with you because my father checks my dresser if he thinks I'm doing something like stealing. We truly give our child a reason to be good when we become a true parent and not their friends.
Sue...good luck

OK, I am not good at parenting, but I am good at keyloggers, so I'll just answer the questions.
At first you should know that basically there are two types of keyloggers: keyloggers and monitoring products. In simple words keyloggers are used for 'bad things' such as stealing passwords and different sensitive data while monitoring products are used for the 'good things' such as monitoring the employees or kids. So keyloggers can be installed remotely on your PC without letting you know and in this situation they really can be dangerous and it will be hard to delete them without damaging your OS. But what you need is a monitoring product. Monitoring products usually require physicall access to the monitoring PC and administrative rights to be installed, so they are totally safe, they will not damage anything and you will be able to delete them when you want. As for the stealhiness of the keyloggers - it depends on keylogger itself, some are hidden and some are not. In your situation I would recommend you to try PC ACME Pro(keyloggers.com). It can be installed in total stealth(all you need is to delete everything except the monitoring module after configuring the program), records the major part of all the user activities and, what is important you will be able to send the log-files on your email, what is also good for your security. Well, that's probably all I wanted to say.

If your going to use a key logger I suggest you get one something like this http://www.keyghost.com/USB-Keylogger.htm rather than the Software kind. . .It cost more but it's also more accurate.

The main problem with software keyloggers or monitoring products is that if its free theres a 50/50 chance that it has a cute little trojan or, what I got because my dad put some bullshit on my computer (this was before I knew how to get passwords through Cain or Linux live cds) get a trojan dropper, which goes in and rips a hole in your security and pipes in thousands of spyware and adware programs. Be careful when doing this stuff, keyloggers are very useful to hackers who put out these products with little ways into your computer once you install it. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

There is a antivirus probelm with keyloggers, and that is that they often contain viruses of some sort. Also legit keyloggers will come up as a virus because of suspiscious behaviour (obviously) so please please don't google for one because they all seem to have viruses.
Stealth varies from keylogger to keylogger.

I recommend that you use the Award Keylogger, it is safe and easy-to-use. it can work in the stealth mode .

I hope this helps.

I would not recommend hardware keyloggers because they can be just pulled out and 'lost'

I had a similar problem with my son and I used a program called http://www.easyspy.co.uk

it was clean and very safe to use and I was up and running in minutes. as a result I had the proof I needed to restrict the internet access and I had a good sit down with my son.

There are some nasty keylogger software out there that will install spyware and adware etc but easyspy was clean of anything like that.

in short if you want to catch them out silently easyspy is what I would try.

The keylogger I would recommend is the free refog keylogger...like I said, it is completely free, and works in stealth. It is basically undetectable...all the icons of the software are hidden, and there is basically no way of finding out the program is on your computer.

It records every stroke you or someone else might type into the computer, and it even shows the website and the time of day you made the keystrokes. You can get it at refog.com