Can I donwload a program from the internet to record chat conversations?

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Request for Question Clarification by theta-ga on 08 Mar 2003 08:30 PST

Hi gizmo2001-ga,
      What software are you using to chat with? For eg., AOL, MSN, ICQ
etc.
      Most of these applications allow you to save your chat
conversations. Are you looking for a program that will do this
automatically?
      Also, what operating system are you using?
Regards,
Theta-ga
:-)

Hello gizmo2001,

	There is a very good chat program called Trillian which will log all
of your conversations, regardless of which chatting system you are
using.   It is available here:
http://www.trillian.cc

	There is a free version (fully functional) and a "pro" version which
adds some other features not relevant to this question.  I can tell
you it is a very good, stable bit of software and its main selling
point is that it allows you to chat with your friends through AOL
Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and IRC, all through
*one* standard interface.  If you have accounts with any, or all, of
these services then you can set up Trillian to connect to them all at
startup.

	I hope this answers your question.

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Request for Answer Clarification by gizmo2001-ga on 09 Mar 2003 09:05 PST

can I do this without the person knowing it?

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Request for Answer Clarification by gizmo2001-ga on 09 Mar 2003 09:45 PST

I am looking for a program that will do this, no matter which user is
on. We have 3 in our house. Different names.

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Clarification of Answer by izzard-ga on 09 Mar 2003 17:24 PST

Yes, absolutely - there is no announcement that the software is
"logging".  All chat software allows you to record everything that is
said one way or another, if only by letting you copy and paste what
has been said into a new file.  Trillian automates this process by
letting you log everything to a file without you having to lift a
finger.

Also, you can easily have multiple users with Trillian, each with
their own logon details.  You can choose whose logons to use when the
program starts and you can also password protect all the settings.

If you need to know more, take a look at their site at www.trillian.cc

Good luck!

A while back I had to record IM conversations between an employee and
external user and found that IM (MSN in this case) was simple to
pickup off the wire by using Microsoft's Network Monitor (or NetMon)
that can be found on the SMS CD.  This has a few drawbacks:

* The collection PC and the sender must be on the same shared ethernet
segment
* The user must be using Ethernet (such as broadband)
* You must understand how to pick though packets and create filters
within NetMon
* You must have access to NetMon
* All IM data is non-encrypted

If you are dedicated enough, you can do it.  Another option if you are
just trying to "spy" on the person is to use on of the many
screen/keyboard capture utilities out there.