Cheat Engine

False Prophet · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 8:13 am Post subject: Legallity issues

I recently finished writing an application that visually monitors and records every moment activity on a machine. It is intended for businesses to monitor employee activity. However before I market it I need to know how legal this is. Especially if I state in my EULA that employers / everyone that uses the application must state to everyone that uses the machine that they are being monitored.
My price is very very low. I'm probably going to sale licenses for $10-15, maybe more for the advanced features. I've decided to go with a forever-free policy for updates on the software, so that might make an impact on the legality too.

Dark Byte · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 8:24 am Post subject:

As long as the application is directly visible to the user so it knows it's there it's ok. (register it as a system process so the os shuts down when it closes)

False Prophet · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 9:33 am Post subject:

Dark Byte · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 9:46 am Post subject:

more like a systray icon that when hovered over tells the name of the program so the user that logs in sees that he's being logged (perhaps change the icon every time he presses a key to see it's actually working)

a random name in the taskmanager doesn't say much, unless you name the exe "System Keylogger and Screen Capture program.exe"

and would even be greater if the user can request the logs himself (This saves time for the system administrator since users have the legal right to demand all the data that has been obtained)

False Prophet · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 9:54 am Post subject:

Okay. I like the idea of user requesting logs. They should probably be saved in a write protected folder somewhere in the network. Also, I have an option of displaying a system icon. But I never put much work into it since windows 7 / vista pretty much hides all system tray icons.

Thanks for the ideas / help Wink

AhMunRa · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 1:48 pm Post subject:

From a corporate stand point employers are not required to inform users that they are being monitored. The equipment the employees use belong to the company, so courts have ruled that employees have no expectation of privacy on a corporate machine. At least in the US.

I know this because I had to write the SOX guidelines for my company. Which included monitoring of user activity for malicious actions, software, etc.