Benign Keylogger for Mac

saltiness · November 2011

First of all, this is for totally benign research purposes. I'm not trying to mine passwords or spy on anyone.

I'm looking for a free and unobtrusive keylogger (and mouse-click or tablet-click in my specific case-logger if possible) for Mac OS X. I work as a photo retoucher and partly for the purposes of enhancing efficiency through data analysation and partly for shits and giggles of seeing how many damn times I hit the same keyboard shortcuts each day I want to record my input activity over the course of a week or so.

The program needs to be as unobtrusive as possible because the scripting we use on these machines is very sensitive to any changes we make. It also needs to be completely benign and absent of any more overly-nefarious looking features (apart from the obvious keylogging) if I stand any chance of getting approval from my superiors to use the program.

Any advice? Or am I better off not risking using something like this at my place of employment?

exis · November 2011

Regardless of what you use, and even if this is your 'own' computer (as in, nobody else uses it), you absolutely need to talk to your IT department/systems admin before installing something like this. Regardless of your intentions, there's a reason keyloggers have a bad rap, and you could easily be accused of doing something dodgy.

saltiness · November 2011

Yep, that is certainly the plan.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud · November 2011

Don't do this. Worst case you have to talk to the Feds, best case you're fired for corporate espionage.

saltiness · November 2011

Okay, alternately, let's say I install this on my own machine at home and I'll conduct my research that way so that it has nothing to do with my place of employment. So far I've found this on download.com but it looks a little sketchy and the .cc top-level domain of the company who makes it is turning me off.

see317 · November 2011

Have you looked into hardware based keyloggers? Since they don't actually operate on the PC hardware they shouldn't interfere with the system operations.

That said, setting up a keylogger at work is mighty suspicious regardless of your reasons or who has approved it.

Tox · November 2011

physical key logger is the way to go, but I think they only make them for PS/2.

E.Coyote · November 2011

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/11294022#Comment_11294022

I knew this thread seemed familiar. Thinkgeek doesn't sell them anymore, but someone posted an alternative. Get the go ahead from your boss before doing anything though.

saltiness · November 2011

Yeah, those hardware ones are pricey. Not sure I'll get $200+ worth of efficiency data out of them. This is merely a pet project. I was hoping there would be a simple and benign solution that would be an easy sell to the higher-ups but that doesn't seem to be the case. Perhaps I'll talk to the scripting guy at work and see if he can cook something up.

dukederek · November 2011

autohotkey probably has your back here, it's a safe program and then you can actually write the script yourself (or look here http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic33148.html&highlight=keylogger which has some discussion on the matter)

EDIT: oh wait, shit, didn't read the mac bit, also can't work out if you can get it for mac either... probably not

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