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September 22, 1999

The Rise Of Snoopware

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The era of downsizing has produced many departments where too few managers are trying to supervise too many employees. Snoopware--keystroke loggers, URL trackers and Web-site blockers--is an attempt to solve the problem with technology. Is snoopware a good thing, or a necessary evil? Or is it an Orwellian invasion of personal rights, and an attempt to substitute technology for good management? Would you use snoopware on your employees? Would you let it be used on you? Join in! Join in the discussion!

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Fred Langa is a senior consulting editor and columnist for Windows Magazine. Fred's free weekly newsletter is available via subscribe@langa.com. You can contact him at fred@langa.com or via his website at http://www.langa.com.

By Fred Langa

Snoopware--software that monitors user actions on a PC or LAN--is everywhere. There's application-metering software that tracks who's using what application on a LAN. There's nannyware: Web-use monitoring software that can block employee access to specified "forbidden" sites, chat rooms, and such. There are proxy-level URL and IP loggers that track (and can enable or block) access to any online resource. There are E-mail monitors that track and parse messages, looking for "bad" words that might indicate that corporate E-mail is being used for sexual purposes or to disclose confidential company information. And then there are keystroke loggers that can track user activity down to each individual keystroke.

All this software has some legitimate purposes. For example, application-metering software can help a company buy only the number of licenses it really needs (usually less than the number of seats). It can inform a help desk about which applications they should concentrate on. It can help an IT department know which centralized applications need the most bandwidth, and which ones can be placed on slower servers, or stored offline or near-line.

There are similar legitimate uses for the other classes of snoopware, too, even down to keystroke loggers: For instance, they can help a company determine exactly how much time is really being spent on various tasks, projects, or assignments.

But the downsides are enormous. Things like nannyware and keystroke loggers prejudge employees and assume the worst about them. When you install this kind of software, you are sending the message: "We don't trust you to behave. We will monitor your every move, and--like Big Brother--we can catch you if you do something naughty. Be on guard and stay on task, not because it's the right thing to do, but because you'll be caught and punished if you don't."

This approach treats all employees as bad apples, and prejudicially lumps everyone together in the category of "untrustworthy." It strips away individuality and treats employees as children who can't or won't distinguish between right and wrong.

Applications like nannyware and keystroke loggers often are used as a substitute for good management practices. The need for this kind of intrusive, Big Brotherish monitoring could be avoided with a few preemptive steps: If you hire good employees, keep them informed and clear about their goals and missions, and cultivate in them a sense of personal responsibility and trustworthiness. They'll usually respond well. No, not all employees will respond in the way you want --there are always some who are lazy, some who abuse what trust is given them, and some who lack self-discipline. These are the personal failings of the individual employees, and management should deal with them as such rather than prejudging all employees as untrustworthy and in need of constant monitoring.

If I'm interviewing a prospective employee and get a bad feeling that maybe this person can't be trusted, I just won't hire them. On the other side of the desk, if I were in a company that indicated (by installing this kind of software) that it didn't trust me as an employee, I'd start polishing my resumé.

Snoopware's damage to trust and morale is bad enough, but this type of software has other failings, not the least of which is imprecision. If I'm running, say, a word processor and working on a document related to Project A, but I'm called away to a meeting on Project B and don't close my document, the keystroke logger will think I've been working on Project A that whole time.

Or, imagine you're counseling a valued subordinate who's depressed and obsessing about a failed project. The failure is painful, but not the sort of actionable issue you want put in the subordinate's personnel file; you do not want to officially involve the HR department. You write in E-mail: "I know you're sorry. The thing to do is to learn from the errors and move on. Spending your time in mea-culpa breast-beating won't do any good." Do you want a sexual-harassment E-mail filter to intercept your message and send it to the company's HR department anyway because it contains the oh-so-terrible word "breast?"

The era of downsizing has produced many departments where too few managers are trying to supervise too many employees. Snoopware is an attempt to solve the problem with technology. But I think it's a mistake, and one that can backfire. If you can't trust your employees, then you have a larger issue than can be solved by logging their keystrokes. Likewise, if your company doesn't trust you and wants to monitor your every move in the office, what does that say about the company? What does it say about you, to accept that level of distrust?

I can see some legitimate uses for snoopware. But not many. And snoopware's limitations, to me, far outweigh the benefits. As both an employer and as an employee, when it comes to snoopware, I just say no.

What's your take? Is snoopware a good thing, or perhaps a necessary evil? Or is it an Orwellian invasion of personal rights, and an attempt to substitute technology for good management? Would you use snoopware on your employees? Would you let it be used on you? Join in!