Desktops: Monitoring my Child's activities on the internet

google desktop might just do the trick

Well, the real problem here is there is almost always going to be a way around monitoring software, espescially if the user knows that it is installed. So, you just have to get tricky. I am a 17 year old, and while I personally don't use the internet for such questionable activities, I have plenty of friends who do, and because I'm the computer nerd of the group, guess who has to clean up their messes? So I've seen a good deal of crap that teenage boys look at on the internet. Anyway, if you want to know jsut about everything he's looking at, but don't want him to know that you're activiely looking at his browsing habits, I suggest you get google desktop search (please bear with me). Google desktop indexes every site that you visit, and makes a cached copy in case it can no longer be visited. It can be hidden to run in the background, and guess what? It doesn't look suspicious! It has many, many other uses than just recording browsing habits. You can set a password to access your index database I am fairly sure (though i don't think I have ever done so so don't quote me on that), but you should have no problems as he, like all of my friends, probably won't even realize its doing this. If you need any help figuring out how to check the index history, just ask. Good luck!