Spyrix Free Keylogger

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on July 06, 2012

Keyloggers are programs that hide in the background and record a user's every keystroke, mouse click, and screen image, letting others (such as the boss) see exactly what that user has been doing while at the computer. Long used in high-security applications, keyloggers can help parents, employers, and others who are responsible for others' behavior (and, more to the point, misbehavior) by clearly showing which Web sites and programs a specific user accessed at a specific time. Spyrix Free Keylogger can put that power in your hands. This easy-to-use freeware logs keystrokes and online activity, takes screenshots, and monitors other activities for specific users without their knowledge.

Spyrix has an attractive user interface that won't look out of place in a corporate environment or a home PC. The program opened with its Settings dialog, where we could set options such as running when Windows starts, removing shortcut menus, and other security-related options. We also set a hot-key combo and password to show Spyrix. Under ScreenShot, we could set Spyrix to record an image any time a window changes or something is copied to the clipboard. Spyrix displays all activity in a list view in the upper half of the main window, with specific items such as documents and images displayed in the preview pane below. The program is very easy to use, once you've set things up to your liking, but we recommend being careful when hiding Spyrix since you'll need to remember your hot-key combo and password to access the program in hidden mode. It's not meant to be easy, since a security tool that any smart kid can disable isn't worth the name, is it?

We recommend Spyrix Free Keylogger for parents, business owners, or anyone who provides PC and Internet access, with the potential liability that comes along with it. But we also recommend using it with caution and with an eye to privacy concerns, too, as we do with any software that monitors user activity. Used properly, Spyrix Free Keylogger can be an invaluable tool for monitoring and enforcing PC access policies at home and at work.