Keyloggers come in at least two broad flavors-hardware devices and the more familiar software variety.

There, the person operating the logging program can retrieve it all, potentially sending it to third parties for criminal purposes.

You don’t know they’ve breached your computer and depending on what kind of keylogger it is, it can steal any passwords you’ve entered, periodically take screen shots, record the web pages you view, grab on to your sent emails and any instant messaging sessions, as well as sensitive financial information (such as credit card numbers, PIN codes, and bank accounts), and then send all that data over the network to a remote computer or web server. And they definitely do not own the device they infect. However, the concern about keyloggers is when malicious actors are behind them. And there are thousands of commercially available keyloggers on the Internet, which advertise themselves for just such a use. In all such cases, if the organization or person downloading and installing the keylogger actually owns the device, then it’s perfectly legal. Suspicious spouses are another market for keyloggers. The same goes for, say, parents, who want to monitor their children’s activities.

Keyloggers are a common tool for corporations, which IT departments use to troubleshoot technical problems on their systems and networks-or to keep an eye on employees surreptitiously.

However, keyloggers can also enable cybercriminals to eavesdrop on you, watch you on your system camera, or listen over your smartphone's microphone Is a keylogger a virus?Īlthough for our purposes, keyloggers operate in the context of malware, they are not always illegal to install and use. The term keylogger, or 'keystroke logger,' is self-explanatory: Software that logs what you type on your keyboard. Keyloggers are a particularly insidious type of spyware that can record and steal consecutive keystrokes (and much more) that the user enters on a device.

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