4 Best Apps To Monitor Someone’s Internet Activity
As the internet becomes an increasingly important part of our lives, having access to effective monitoring software has become more essential than ever. Whether you’re looking to improve the focus of your employees or just want to make sure your children are staying safe online, there’s no shortage of great reasons to use computer monitoring software.
The 4 best applications to monitor someone’s online activity include Wolfeye Remote Screen, Teramind, Norton Web, and SentryPC. Each application offers a distinct set of features and powerful advantages, making them well-suited to different scenarios. All are extremely powerful monitoring tools.
In this article, I’ll be looking at all of the best applications you can use to monitor someone’s internet activity. I’ll also be explaining why I chose to include each software in this list, what purpose each application is best used for, and everything you need to know about using each program effectively.
1. Best Overall: Wolfeye Remote Screen
As far as computer monitoring applications go, there’s no better option than Wolfeye Remote Screen. This powerful program allows you to view the activity on devices as it occurs using a convenient email link, ensuring that monitoring is a simple process. Additionally, if you email Wolfeye Remote Screen’s support team to activate the recording archival feature, you can see the history of how a device was used.
That’s not the only powerful feature that Wolfeye Remote Screen offers, either. Wolfeye allows you to automatically screenshot devices at time intervals, which is perfect for achieving the same monitoring effect if you don’t have time to look at hours of footage.
Additionally, Wolfeye Remote Screen monitors and logs when devices and websites are accessed and used. Unlike browser history, the user has no options to delete or obfuscate this history log — which ensures that you’re able to see a complete history of how every device is used.
Lastly, Wolfeye Remote Screen is completely discreet. Once the application is installed and an exception is made in your antivirus program, it will continue to run in the background of Windows even after the computer is restarted. It’s completely undetectable and inaccessible, so you won’t have to worry about any interference with your monitoring.
If you decide to use Wolfeye Remote Screen to monitor someone’s internet activity, you’ll also find that it’s an incredibly affordable solution. Best of all, Wolfeye offers a free trial of the application — so you don’t have to commit to purchasing an annual subscription before you’re certain it offers all of the features you need.
If you want a versatile and complete solution that will allow you to keep your employees or children safe on the web, there’s no better choice than Wolfeye Remote Screen. Parents and employers alike have found this powerful and affordable application provides everything they need to implement complete monitoring and see measurable improvements in device usage.
2. Best For Businesses: Teramind
Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, searches for workplace monitoring software have doubled. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to discern the best monitoring applications from the hundreds of alternatives available. As far as the best screen monitoring programs for businesses go, one of the best specialized options is Teramind.
This versatile application can be used with Windows, macOS, and a variety of niche operating systems. Best of all, it’s completely secure. This makes Teramind a perfect choice for implementation in networks where cybersecurity is a priority.
Also, Teramind packs all of the essential features with a few powerful bonuses. Teramind allows you to view your employee’s screens live as they work, while also offering a history playback of screens that allows you to monitor past activity and collect evidence of device usage policy violations.
That’s not all that Teramind can track. In fact, this powerful application is capable of monitoring web chats, email activity, social media usage, clipboard content, keystrokes, printer usage, and file transfers. Because the monitoring is cohesive and complete, you won’t have any obstacles in catching violations as soon as they occur.
And if employee privacy is a priority to you, Teramind even offers a feature where you can reduce its monitoring and only view violations that Teramind automatically detected. You can also customize what the application considers a violation and configure automatic alerting for any violations that occur.
Best of all, Teramind offers a variety of plans that can fit any kind of workplace. The starter plan just offers the basic user monitoring features, while the user activity monitoring plan is perfect for businesses that need a more comprehensive suite of features. If you want a plan that will keep your network extra secure, Teramind offers a data loss prevention plan that includes additional cybersecurity features for a small additional cost.
3. Best For Families: Norton Family
As far as family device monitoring applications are concerned, Norton Family is the best option for encouraging your child to build good internet usage habits. While this application doesn’t offer as many thorough monitoring features, it’s designed to encourage your children to develop critical thinking as they use their devices.
Norton Family can be installed on an unlimited amount of devices and allows the creation of up to 15 child profiles, making it an excellent option for large families. And monitoring the data that it gathers is simple, since it can be managed from the website or a mobile app.
Norton Family is easily one of the most affordable options, too. Rather than being charged per child like many competitors, Norton Family offers unlimited access to its powerful features for a modest $49.99 per year.
Norton Family is compatible with Windows, Android, and iOS, but isn’t compatible with macOS — so while it isn’t a complete solution, it does offer an impressive amount of device coverage. It is designed to protect your child’s privacy in mundane activities while still preventing them from using inappropriate or blocked websites. And if your child attempts to violate policy, you’ll immediately be alerted.
As mentioned before, Norton Family is also designed to help your child build good internet usage habits. If they want to contest the block on a certain website because they believe it’s educational or beneficial, Norton Family allows them to write in a text prompt and directly submit a request to you. This will allow you to hold productive discussions on why certain websites are blocked, and to gradually build a trusting relationship concerning how your child uses the web.
Best of all, Norton Web is extremely easy to set up. The application comes with pre-made website filters, including categories like illicit content, social networking, and online chat, so you won’t have any trouble configuring it for your exact parenting needs. It also allows you to adjust the filters to apply based on the child profile, what device is used, and what time of day it is. And if you want to adjust any of the categories, you can add and remove websites at your discretion.
Norton Family is also excellent for encouraging your children to reduce their screen time. You can set specific limits on how long your child can use a particular device or category of websites, which is perfect for encouraging quality device time and helping your children enjoy the day smartphone-free.
Lastly, Norton Family provides tons of smart metrics that allow you to see an analysis of how your child is spending their time on the device and what applications and websites they like to use most. Unlike with many other applications, however, you won’t be able to directly monitor what they do on the web. This is a major drawback when you compare Norton Family to applications like Wolfeye.
When you use a direct screen monitoring application to protect your children online, you can more easily allow them to use websites with social networking features while trusting that they’re engaging safely online. And if you believe that your child is using the web inappropriately, you can use the screen recordings to address the issue directly.
This isn’t possible with applications like Norton Family, and as a result, your child is never able to practice using safe habits on blocked categories of websites.
4. Best General Monitoring Solution: SentryPC
While most device monitoring applications are geared towards either parents or workplaces, there are a few applications on the market that serve as great generalist solutions. One of the best general monitoring applications on the market is SentryPC. SentryPC includes a variety of advanced features, including automatic screenshotting, search history archival, and keystroke recording.
Once the data is saved by SentryPC, you’ll have convenient access to all the monitoring info from an easy-to-access web portal.
SentryPC offers plenty of features to appeal to parents. For example, it offers 14 pre-configured web filters which allow you to easily block inappropriate content on the web. You can also block websites that include frequent use of words you don’t want your children to see, such as adult words, profanity, and slurs.
And as far as the workplace goes, employers will also be impressed with the complete set of features that SentryPC offers. It includes an interval screenshot feature that’s perfect for recording everything that happens on a large number of devices. Additionally, if you want to take your monitoring to the next level, SentryPC includes a keylogger feature that will help you stay in the loop with what your employees are doing on their devices.
SentryPC is highly customizable, too. Aside from the adjustable web content filters and profanity filters included in the application, you can also configure daily usage limits and schedules to make sure that devices aren’t being overused. And unlike many other applications with the same feature, SentryPC allows you to include a five-minute warning to help users save their work before the device locks.
Best of all, effectively using the monitoring features in SentryPC is easy, even when you’re working with a huge number of users. After you’ve opened the SentryPC web portal, if you navigate to the activities alerts section, you’ll be able to see a log of every violation the program detected, when the violation occurred, and any context that SentryPC deemed relevant.
While the application is somewhat more expensive than many other applications on the market, SentryPC is reasonably priced when you consider the powerful features it offers. If you plan to use this application to monitor your children or employees, you can expect to pay $4.99 per device per month. This makes the application a great fit for small families and enterprise companies, but there are plenty of better alternatives for other scenarios.
Wolfeye Remote Screen Is the Best Device Monitoring Solution
While all of these applications are worth considering, there’s no doubt that Wolfeye Remote Screen is the best at balancing a powerful selection of features with an easy-to-use interface, affordable cost, and a supportive customer support team.
If you decide to use Wolfeye Remote Screen to monitor your children and employees, you’ll have the ability to view live video and archived interval screenshots at any time. Additionally, the application offers a complete log of device usage and internet history. Best of all, this data can be accessed from any device of your choice as long as you’re able to use the provided link.
Unlike many other applications, Wolfeye Remote Screen is also completely discreet when configured correctly — ensuring that you’ll be able to continue monitoring devices without interruption.
If you believe that Wolfeye Remote Screen could be the right solution for you, the best thing you can do is download the Wolfeye Remote Screen trial and configure it using the simple tutorial. Once you’ve completed the setup process, you’ll be able to see just how powerful Wolfeye Remote Screen is — and how it can change device usage habits for the better.
Final Thoughts
As the internet has become increasingly essential, using computer monitoring software has become more important than ever. Unfortunately, with how many applications there are on the market, it can be difficult to figure out what actually works. As long as you use this guide to find the best screen monitoring software for your situation, it won’t be long before you see incredible improvements in productivity and safe online habits.