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I have recently convinced my brother to join the Linux side. He has 4 kids and wants to me to connect his desktop with their systems for monitoring purposes. What would be the best way for him to find anything they try to hide without needing their permission? It would be best if he could do this without needing to be on their devices. They all have Ubuntu, and I have seen this work on business systems.

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    Please be more specific about what you want to monitor. Is it the web pages they visit? The software they use? The emails they write (and read)? The chats, Facebook, bank withdrawals?
    – user68186
    Dec 21, 2014 at 0:37
  • You state very clearly that you're looking for solutions to snoop through stored data. Have you looked into other means of parental access control like web filters? Either additionally or alternatively (depending on the desired level of intrusion) this may be appropriate. Dec 21, 2014 at 0:37
  • What information do you want to monitor? File monitoring? Web monitoring? What kind of level of monitoring do you really want?
    – Thomas Ward
    Dec 21, 2014 at 2:01

1 Answer 1

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Monitoring file content

Assuming you want to monitor file system content and the monitored system is a *nix, the simplest solution I can come up with, is:

  1. On the monitored system add a user account (e. g. dad) for the supervising party and add it to the administrator group (more):

    sudo adduser dad sudo
    sudo passwd dad
    

    That way the supervisor account will be able to gain unlimited access to all system resources with sudo, including files of other all other local users. They can also impersonate other users and run applications in their stead to explore the user data stored by that application (e. g. the history of web browser, or the messages and contacts of an e-mail or other messaging client).

  2. Still on the monitored system configure remote access for that account. The most common way for this would be an SSH server:

    sudo apt-get install openssh-server
    sudo start ssh
    

    The default configuration should be sufficient. For details look at the Ubuntu Community Help Wiki.

  3. On the monitoring system, dad should now be able to log in to the monitored system (identified by either host name or IP address, e. g. child-pc) over the network with SSH:

    sudo apt-get install openssh-client
    ssh -X dad@child-pc
    

    The option -X will forward windows created by graphical applications on the monitored system to the display of the monitoring system.

    Alternatively any SCP/SFTP client should be able to list directories and transfer files; e. g. Nautilus offers in the “File” menu the option to “Connect to server” of type “SSH”.

  4. (Optionally, on the monitoring system) Since one should avoid to use password-based authentication over SSH, you can set up public key authentication.

  5. (Optionally, on the monitored system) Revoke the administrative privileges of the monitored user account(s) (e. g. child):

    sudo usermod -G "$(id -nG child | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -vwF -e admin -e sudo | tr '\n' , | head -c -1)" child
    

    Attention: All remaining sessions/processes of child will remain part of the admin group and retain administrative privileges until logout/destruction.

    Otherwise child may lock out dad (which would be noticed and likely prevented by a non-technical policy) or subtly modify the system as to hide files in non-obvious ways. Of course that means that child may not install or remove packages or perform other system tasks without dad's help.

About file encryption

child may try to encrypt their files, which cannot be prevented through technical means as long as they're still allowed to download and run programs. One can only prevent the use of transparent encryption systems like dm-crypt/LUKS, eCryptFS, or TrueCrypt, because they all need administrative privileges or a system policy allowing their use without this privilege.

Last words

All that being said, a sufficiently apt user with physical access to a computer can always gain unlimited access and therefore lock out dad, modify the system as to hide compromising data from dad, or trick dad into a decoy environment without access to compromising data.

At this point things become more a question of trust than one of control. From a parenting point of view, I heard multiple people say: If a child is old enough to acquire the knowledge to circumvent parental control, they're old enough to be trusted to use their computer responsibly.

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  • I think they mean web monitoring as well. That's typically what 'parental controls' restrict
    – Thomas Ward
    Dec 21, 2014 at 2:00
  • @ThomasW.: I suspect that OP may want to know about web access restriction and monitoring, but the question only says “find anything they try to hide”. From a non-technical perspective this sounds like a parent looking for hidden things stored in their child's room. Somebody else is free to write an answer about web monitoring or edit mine to include that topic. Dec 21, 2014 at 2:07
  • Expand 'try to hide' then to include hiding what they're browsing via incognito mode and such, or via Tor. 'what they're hiding' expands greatly to a much larger set of what's being sought after when you actually dig down into it. (As an IT security-centric guy, we have similar things we seek out for 'finding what's being hidden' and such.)
    – Thomas Ward
    Dec 21, 2014 at 3:23
  • Your last paragraph on trust is the whole thing. Trust your kids will make them trust you. Do we really want to educate our kids to encrypt their secrets in order to hide them from their parents? Do we really want our kids to grow up in a totalitarian surveillance environment?
    – Takkat
    Dec 21, 2014 at 8:03
  • @ThomasW.: I completely agree with you from a technical point of view, but as I stated in “Last words”, total control is ultimately impossible and may not be in a child's (and therefore hopefully in their parent's) best interest. If a child proves that they can outsmart their guardian and has a motive to do so, that would probably result in an arms race of paranoia. Alas that would be a topic for Parenting.SE. Dec 21, 2014 at 10:16

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