IOGenie Home Guardian

Monitoring computer activity can mean more than one thing. While tracking your hardware to ensure that everything is going well is what many would think of, there's also the monitoring of keystrokes and actions one does on a computer. This type of monitoring can be a bit controversial, and rightly so.

Of course, recording keystrokes is the textbook definition of a keylogger. Though ill-intentioned keyloggers are a threat to look out for, harmless alternatives, which serve to help the user monitor computer activity, exist. That is how IOGenie Home Guardian works, as it's a piece of software aimed to help parents surveil their children's PC activity.

First off, to avoid any confusion during the setup process, you'll have to pause your antivirus for a while. It's only natural for an antivirus to immediately seize a keylogger, even if it's a harmless one.

The setup involves setting a password, which you'll use to access the program's interface. The interface is quite simplistic, but it's easy enough to navigate through, so less tech-experienced parents can have a go at the program without worries. Each function is clearly labeled, and though the Free option only allows access to the Keystroke monitoring feature, it should be enough for many users.

Click the green monitoring button, and the keystroke logging will start. If you wish to hide the program, you can do so by using the Invisible Mode feature, which hides it completely from view. You'll have to engage the Ctrl+Alt+X hotkey if you wish to bring the program to the forefront again.

As stated before, the monitoring capabilities are quite limited in the Free version, but they should be enough for many people. Anything the program records during its monitoring will be displayed in the logs section, which doesn't shy away from displaying any keystrokes. The Event History menu is where users will be able to see when they engaged and disengaged the monitoring.

Whether you're a fan of keyloggers (and privacy...) is a different matter, but for what it's supposed to do, IOGenie Home Guardian provides users with a functional keystroke monitoring tool, which will hopefully be used in good faith by its audience.