12 ETHICAL AND LEGAL
CONSIDERATIONS
As their name suggests, the standard keylogger is
designed to capture and record key presses, secretly
capturing sensitive information including passwords,
private messages, and other sensitive information.
Their development and deployment raise big ethical
questions, especially about privacy and consent. The
main ethical concern is whether or not these
keyloggers should be used without the user's consent.
Users misuse those tools for criminal activities like
identity theft and financial fraud etc, this is undeniably
a grave invasion of privacy. But there’s a moral
calculus that needs to be done to ensure that people
utilize keylogging technology effectively.
The legality of keyloggers is a bit of a grey area,
and the use of them often raises serious privacy and
consent considerations. Keyloggers can be used
legally in cases like this, where potential use is
tracking keyboard activity of employees, assuming
they have given explicit consent and have a valid
justification for contact. However, they may also be
abused that result in serious invasion of privacy that
are highly regulated by laws such as the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU). Those legal
requirements need to be addressed and it is upon
organizational groups to be responsive, lest they face
the repercussions while also upholding protection
provisions for employees against individuals. Such
rules are important in reducing legal and ethical risks.
From an ethical point of view, there are numerous
caveats in the use of keyloggers by developers and
users alike that prevent them from falling into
unethical catagories. The consent to use these tools
must be proper with justification and they should be
accessible to the concerned parties. Transparency is
crucial: people must understand fully, the reasons,
process and timing of their surveillance. Since
accountability and trust are important, it is good to
always document and get a written consent as well.
This and a few other measures ensure that without
them the use of key loggers is an unethical behavior
and an invasion of the right to privacy of individuals.
This should all be done under a set of protocols to
ensure that this is happening in an ethical and lawful
manner. Installing a keylogger requires the permission
of all participants. This means getting all parties to
send a written agreement, which should outline how
we will be monitoring. That includes encrypting data
collected, using secure storage mechanisms and
applying fine-grained access controls. These steps
ensure sensitive data is not only protected against
unauthorized access and abuse but they are also
protected. Data Protection is the only solution to
eliminate all perils from the key logger.
Finally, periodic audits and compliance
assessments would be required to maintain adherence
to privacy laws and ethical standards. The purpose of
the audits is to recognize and eliminate possible
vulnerabilities in the monitoring process. This is just
one way to enable developers and users to employ
keyloggers while providing these significant
precautions to balance their positive benefits with the
ethical issue of preserving individual privacy. Not
only is this approach protective of sensitive data, but
it also builds trust and accountability, injecting it into
the use of monitoring technologies.
13 DEFENCES AGAINST
KEYLOGGERS
13.1 Behavioural Biometrics
Behavioral biometrics are good at differentiating
activity as an individual computer user carefully
follows an individual routine that identifies the user
from all others accessing that user’s computer, and can
thereby detect anomalies that flag a keylogger. This
and other techniques like this are hard to implement,
however this is very effective especially in high
security environments. For most of us, fingerprint or
facial biometrics, with much less data required, offer
sufficient security functions. NIST’s SP 800-63B
details a number of best practices to help protect users,
illustrating, for example, how multi-factor
authentication and biometric verification dramatically
reduce the risk of credential stealing showing how
user behavior can scale security exponentially.
13.2 System Audits and File Integrity
Monitoring
Logs are invaluable tools in malicious code detection;
the standard system audit identifies the file or
configuration changes that hide keyloggers. Other
software tools, such as Windows Defender’s file
integrity monitoring, can notify customers of
suspicious changes. Use MacOS Activity Monitor or
Windows Task Manager to spot suspicious packages
or actions. That gear has a technical sound to it, but do
have a relative effectiveness.