Everyone talks about having a safe and secure PC. The discussion usually centers on Anti-virus protection, Firewalls and a strong browser that will reject pop-ups and other web-based auto-downloads. But I thought of another aspect of security that is almost never talked about: the ability to track harmful changes and recover lost data.

Let me preface this discussion with how I came to realize this little loophole in my PC security: her name is Jenny and she is 13 years old and home from school for the whole summer!

There is a lot that can happen to your computer - whether on purpose or by accident - that can have an affect on its performance, and perhaps on your safety. For example, if the wrong files get deleted, you can have a seriously corrupted system. If someone downloads what they think is a safe file, and it turns out not to be, you could become infected with a bad virus. Other events can result in your being locked out of your own bank account or your private passwords and personal information opened up to anyone that cares to look.

As, I said, Jenny is home for the summer. First thing I noticed, more so than last year (her final pre-teen summer) was that she was spending lots more time on the computer than ever before. Aside from normal parent involvement and diligence, I let her do her thing. But as the hours increased, I found myself asking "what is she doing online - and what is she doing to that machine?" Because, I noticed the machine running a bit slower than usual and I couldn't find a folder.

Then it dawned on me - not only do I need to step up my own involvement and knowledge of what she's doing all day. I should have a record of everything that happens on that machine. I need a type of computer monitoring software. That way, if something happens - to her or the machine - I can fix it.

Good daddy skills, right? Well am I glad I did that!!! Turns out the little devil had discovered a file sharing site and was overloading my computer with crappy music and video files (some of which were completely incorrectly titled and not all that appropriate for a 13-year-old). She was hiding everything in a sub-sub-sub folder. Vixen. I confronted her. Told her to stop or I will blacklist the site. I also reminded her that daddy has over 2,000 albums to listen to and that today's music is shite. But I also had a serious talk about copyrights, illegalities and how people will plant things in those files that will hurt a computer. Bottom line is that this incident was very minor, but your mind can wander about had bad it could have been.

The program I found and bought is PC Pandora 5.0. I only mention them here because they solved my problem very very quickly and efficiently. In fact, the next time "little J-dog" (I can't believe that is her nickname among friends) went on the computer after I had installed it, I saw everything. It's a monitoring software program that takes actual snapshots of the computer screen. Nothing left to the imagination. Past the screenshots you have areas to check websites visited, emails sent and received, instant messenger chats, keystrokes logged (awesome for passwords), peer-2-peer files traded (bingo!), programs accessed and more. It's a pretty neat little package and pretty affordable (about half what it coasts to fill up the family motorcade with gas). Also, you can try-before-you-buy for 2 hours.

Check out the PC Pandora website and their blog and some of the other sites I've listed below. If you have a teenager in the house - you need this monitoring software on your computer!

Oh, and the missing folder - that was my bad. But I used another Pandora program called Recovery to find it. It's a free data retrieval program you can download at the Pandora Recovery website.