Authorities in San Diego on Wednesday issued a warning about the misuse of Internet-monitoring software designed to help parents protect their children from becoming victims of online predators and bullying.
The "Computer Cop" software allows parents to quickly scan photos, videos, emails and chat messages on their children's computers, looking for inappropriate content.
According to the District Attorney's Office, recent reports have pointed out some privacy issues with the software, which — like most online tools — can be misused in the hands of crooks.
The issues can be easily corrected and the District Attorney's Office is suggesting users of "Computer Cop" software protect their online privacy by not using the key stroke-logging feature and removing the software disc from the computer when not in use.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties organization based in San Francisco, has reported extensively on "Computer Cop" and found it lacking in many ways:
"The way ComputerCOP works is neither safe nor secure. It isn’t particularly effective either, except for generating positive PR for the law enforcement agencies distributing it. As security software goes, we observed a product with a keystroke-capturing function, also called a “keylogger,” that could place a family’s personal information at extreme risk by transmitting what a user types over the Internet to third-party servers without encryption. That means many versions of ComputerCOP leave children (and their parents, guests, friends, and anyone using the affected computer) exposed to the same predators, identity thieves, and bullies that police claim the software protects against."
In 2012, the District Attorney's Office spent $25,000 in asset forfeiture funds on 5,000 copies of "Computer Cop." The software was provided to parents free of charge, in part due to an increase in prosecutions of Internet predators. The District Attorney's Office is one of more than 240 law enforcement agencies to issue the software.
