Surf Spy by Sureshot – FAQ

Surf Spy V2.1 by Sureshot – FAQ

If you can’t find the requested information, please consult the manual. It may have the required information.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the Surf Spy?
2. What is the purpose of the program?
3. On what platforms does the Surf Spy run?
4. What is the difference between Surf Spy Personal and Surf Spy Enterprise?
5. Is Surf Spy password protected?
6. How invisible is Surf Spy?
7. How is the Surf Spy uninstalled?
8. What can I do to make Surf Spy as hard to spot as possible?
9. I have an AOL account – can Surf Spy email the log files?
10. Where can I get an email account?
11. How can set up a Yahoo mail account for Surf Spy?
12. I would like to use the same email account as I use in my email client? How can I do that?
13. When I press the Test button to test my mail settings, it won’t work. What should I do?
14. How invisible are the emails that Surf Spy sends?
15. I use a modem, how invisible will Surf Spy send emails?
16. I lost my password. What should I do?
17. How can I monitor other computers in a network?
18. I would like to empty the log file. How can I do that?
19. I get the error message “Could not find the DLL WS2_32.dll”. What should I do?
20. I’m not sure what isn’t working, is there a way I can find out?
21. Some URLs are not logged, why?
22. I would like to monitor a multi-user machine. Is that possible?
23. I think I’ve found a bug, what should I do?

1. What is the Surf Spy?

Surf Spy is an invisible tool that monitors the Internet activity on your computer. It captures the link (URL) of every visited web site and stores it to an encrypted file. The log file can be sent secretly with email to a specified receiver. Surf Spy Enterprise allows logging to a centralized server. This is very useful for large companies and schools that want to monitor a large number of computers.

2. What is the purpose of the program?

The purpose of the program is to provide you with an activity log of where people are surfing on your computer.

3. On what platforms does the Surf Spy run?

Surf Spy is running on Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.

4. What is the difference between Surf Spy Personal and Surf Spy Enterprise?

Surf Spy Personal is the application that is installed on the monitored machine. It records every link (URL) and logs it to a file, email or the Enterprise Server. Surf Spy Enterprise is a server that the personal can log to. E.g. if your company want to monitor 10 computers, then you install Surf Spy Personal at these machines and set them to log to a server. This server is the enterprise server, which you install at one central computer. All 10 computers will now send their logged links to the centralised server.

5. Is Surf Spy password protected?

Yes, the config application is password protected. Among other things the config application is used to view log files. So the user has to know the password of the application in order to view the logs.

6. How invisible is Surf Spy?

It is hard to find Surf Spy. You can’t find Surf Spy in the add/remove programs menu, start menu or the task bar. It is invisible in the Task Manager’s Application menu. On Windows 95, 98 and ME you can’t even see it in the Task Manager’s process list.

7. How is the Surf Spy uninstalled?

Locate the folder where Surf Spy is installed. The default is under C:\Program Files\session client\. In this folder, double-click the file uninstall.bat. When it has finished simply delete the whole Surf Spy directory. If you can’t remember to what folder you installed Surf Spy you can search for the file config.exe.

8. What can I do to make Surf Spy as hard to spot as possible?

After installation you can easily deploy Surf Spy. This will allow you to copy only the needed files to a target machine. You can choose a cover name for these files. For more information about deploying Surf Spy see the manual.

Also, we recommend that you choose a meaningless directory to install/deploy Surf Spy to, perhaps under the windows folder. E.g. “C:\Windows\System32\npdp”. It is most unlikely that users look into such folder. Making Surf Spy files hidden will make it harder to find as well.

9. I have an AOL account – can Surf Spy email the log files?

If you have an AOL account you can use one of the preconfigured accounts or get a free email account. See the next question.

10. Where can I get an email account?

There are lots of places where you can get an email account. We recommend Yahoo. They are reliable. Please go to http://mail.yahoo.com.

11. How can I set up a Yahoo mail account for Surf Spy?

Please go to http://mail.yahoo.com. If you don’t have an account already, please sign up. Do this by pressing the “sign up” link. Choose a username and fill in the required information.

After filling in the information, please go to the login page again, http://mail.yahoo.com. Let’s assume that you chose the username “mykeylogs” and the password “secret”. If you are prompted for a username and password, please fill in these and log in.

Now you will have to set up the yahoo account so it can be used to send emails with Surf Spy. This is what yahoo call Yahoo! Delivers. Go to the “Mail Home” page my clicking the Check mail link. Click Options->Yahoo! Delivers. Click the Yes radio button. Click Finished->Sign out. Now your account is ready to use in Surf Spy.

Open Surf Spy config application. Choose the Mail tab. Check “Log with email”. Under “Preconfigured mail services”, choose “User Defined”. In the “From” field, enter your email address, that is “[email protected]”. In the “To” field, enter the email address of where you’d like to send the logs. You may send it to your new address, “[email protected]”, if you like. In the SMTP field, enter “smtp.mail.yahoo.com”. Now, check the “Use POP authentication”. In the “POP” field, enter “pop.mail.yahoo.com”. In the “Username” field, enter “mykeylogs”. In the “Password” field, enter “secret”.
Push the “Test” button to make sure that the settings work. If Surf Spy says the mail was sent successfully a mail should arrive in a couple of minutes.

12. I would like to use the same email account as I use in my email client? How can I do that?

You can use the same email account for Surf Spy as you are using in your email client. In order to send mail you have to configure Surf Spy under the “Mail” tab. You can get the necessary setting from you email client.
If you are using Outlook Express, do like this:

1. In the Surf Spy configuration application under the mail tab, select “User Defined” mail service.

2. Open Outlook Express.

3. In the Outlook Express menu click Tools->Accounts.

3. Double click on one of the accounts to view its settings.

4. In the General tab you can see the exact email address. Copy and paste this into the “From” field under Surf Spys mail tab.

5. In the Servers tab you can see your SMTP and POP server. Click “Use POP authentication” in Surf Spy. Copy the SMTP server name from Outlook to the SMTP field in Surf Spy. Do the same with the POP server name.

6. Also under the Servers tab, copy the “Account name” field to Surf Spys “Username” field.

7. Fill in the password of your mail account in the “Password” field in Surf Spy.

8. In the “Advanced” tab in Outlook Express, if the SMTP and POP port is not 25 and 110 you have to do these changes in Surf Spy as well.

13. When I press the Test button to test my mail settings, it won’t work. What should I do?

If you can’t get the mail working, please check the following:
– Try all of the preconfigured mail accounts. (Default Mail 1-4)
– If you’re using a user defined account. Have you entered the correct settings in the mail tab? The error message you get when pressing the Test button might give you a clue what is wrong.
– Are you behind a firewall that does not allow SMTP connections? Please consult you system administrator.

14. How invisible are the emails that Surf Spy sends?

The emails that Surf Spy sends uses a direct connection to the mail server you’ve chosen. That is, it does not use your email client (Outlook, Outlook Express etc) to send the emails. No trails are left of the sent email.

15. I use a modem, how invisible will Surf Spy send emails?

Using a modem is no problem. Surf Spy will silently check if you are connected to the Internet. It will not start dialling. Thus, emails are only sent when the modem is already connected to the Internet.

16. I lost my password. What should I do?

You have to uninstall and install the software.

17. How can I monitor other computers in a network?

If you’d like to monitor multiple computers in a network you have to install it on each computer you’d like to monitor. Notice that you must purchase multiple licenses in order to do that. If you’d like to have the log files sent to a central location we recommend that you use Surf Spy Enterprise edition.

18. I would like to empty the log file. How can I do that?

Under the file tab in the config application, press the “Clear logfile” button.

19. I get the error message “Could not find the DLL WS2_32.dll”. What should I do?

If you get the error message “Could not find the DLL WS2_32.dll”, please download and install Microsoft’s Winsock 2 update for Windows 95 at http://www.microsoft.com/Windows95/downloads/contents/WUAdminTools/S_WUNetworkingTools/W95Sockets2/Default.asp

20. I’m not sure what isn’t working, is there a way I can find out?

If you are not sure what is causing the error, Surf Spy can help you to find out exactly what is going on. To do this, start the configuration application (config.exe) and press the “Advanced Settings” button under the “System Tab”. In this dialog you can find two options called “Report with messagebox” and “Report with log file”. If an error occurs and the first option is used, Surf Spy will output error messages in message boxes. Observe that this will reveal Surf Spy and should only be used for debugging purpose. Reporting to log file creates a file called sesclilog.txt with all error messages. Open this file and the error message might give you an idea of what is going on.

21. Some URLs are not logged, why?

Surf Spy includes only the valuable information in the log. Surf Spy will not log invalid URLs. For example, “http//www.invalid.com” is not logged. Also, URLs viewed less than 3 seconds are not logged.

22. I would like to monitor a multi-user machine. Is that possible?

If you are running windows 9X/ME Surf Spy will monitor all users.
If you are running windows NT/2000/XP please follow these instructions to monitor a multi-user machine:
Log in as “Administrator” and install the software. Start the configuration application and configure the software according to your preferences. Before you let any other user log in you have to change the rights for the “logfile.cip” file to be writable by the users you’d like to monitor. If you are using the “Report with log file” option you have to change the rights for the “debug_log.txt” file as well.
To change the rights for a file, right-click the file -> Properties -> Security.

23. I think I’ve found a bug, what should I do?

As far as we know, we don’t have any undetected bugs in our code )
If you’ve found a bug, please get in touch with us. Please include this in your bugreport:
1. The version of the software. Look in the “About” tab in the Config application.
2. Information about your platform, that is, the Windows version.
3. And most important, detailed description of what goes wrong.

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