You can distribute this document freely, as long as no changes are made to the file, or as long as someone else does not pretend credit for it. All comments and suggestions about the material presented here should be directed at [email protected]. If future versions of this document include add-ons coming from other people than me, then proper credit to the various authors will be clearly identified. All version updates of this document are to be released by me.
You can find it online at http://www.geocities.com/floydian_99/
The goal of this paper is to present a way for someone interested in computer usage tracking to do so using InstallWatch. The reasons or the ethics behind computer usage tracking is beyond the scope of this document. Other ways to achieve the same (or probably better) results already exists, so this is just one more way to do it.
Preface
While doing my research this summer, I found a nice program that I immediately fell in love with. Better yet, it had a twin sister even more attractive. These programs are InstallWatch and InstallRite, available at www.epsilonsquared.com. In my paper "A poor man Tripwire-like system on Windows 9x/NT", I described how to use InstallWatch/InstallRite (identified as InstallRite from hereon) to have a setup similar to a basic Tripwire system (www.tripwire.com). This paper presents one other way to use this software.
This document is presented to anyone who has interests in computer security, privacy issues, computer monitoring, snooping techniques and computing in general.