question for the techies

[MoonCat]

I know that there's software that is used to count mouse clicks and to count keystrokes. What I would like to know is, do these things tell you where you were clicking/typing?

If you have an offline work program set up on your computer...and you also have a window open to a website at the same time....can the counter determine which one you were typing or clicking on? If you have two websites open at the same time, can the software determine which one you're clicking/typing on?

Or do they just count clicks and keystrokes on a given machine without determining what site or program is being clicked or typed on?

[EricKei]

I would presume that the more complex keyloggers could do such a thing. Unfortunately, I would also presume that such programs are *almost* the exclusive purview of the government and/or malicious hackers. At the very least, I would expect a competently-made keylogger to ID the URL of the webpage, or name of the document, that was in focus when the typing was done. Determining the "currently active" window is actually critical to the functioning of many programs, as it is part of the mechanism that tells the system where to put the "in-use" mouse and text cursors.

If the program LITERALLY just counts keystrokes and mouseclicks, then I must assume that it lacks the above functions. If ...the user sitting at such a computer... were able to ascertain the name -- or even just ID the .EXE/executable file name -- of that program, finding out its real name and capabilities would be a trivial matter.

[Jack]

A program that only counts keystrokes and doesn't log what or where they are, such as Whatpulse (it does count the number of times you've used each character, I believe, but that's the extent of the logging, and that chart should really look mostly the same for any group of people typing English), won't log what windows the keystrokes were in. WhatPulse is the only application like this that I know of, anyway, and it doesn't do that. If it does, it's more like a keylogger, anyway.

[Pedersen]

EricKei has it right. It depends highly on the program/mechanism.

For instance, a hardware keylogger (such as this) won't know anything about any windows. Instead, it simply records everything you type.

A software keylogger being installed on the system? Some of them do nothing but count. Some of them record which window you're in, along with the window's title. And some of them go so far as to make a video of your entire session that can be played back later.

Without knowing the program, we can't tell you how far that one can go.

[MoonCat]

Very interesting. So it really depends on what keylogger they're using. Thank you!