MicShadow said:
show a screenshot of all running processes in task manager, Id be able to identify any monitoring applications
Good job nothing is hidden from task manager then...........
Back on topic rather than telling how to do it I will tell you ways of monitoring things. I will echo Scorpei's comment on "too much effort", this game is not easy and if that is your limit give up now and save us all some time. I probably missed something obvious but hey.
Local monitoring.
1) Checking your browser history. Also checking cookies (they can stay for years if unchecked) and temp files from browser (60 tabs open tends to mean something likely gets written to the drive at some point).
Problems, can be deleted, can be circumvented by use of another browser such as firefox portable, can be circumvented by use of another operating system (see live CD like puppy linux).
Solutions. Extra storage, I can have software copy history every so often to somewhere else for later viewing. Also does nothing against real time and the other methods below.
2) Keylogger. Two main forms are hardware and software.
Hardware sits between the keyboard and socket (you could internalise one I guess but it is rare) and some can also sit on whatever management interface there is (hint firewire/ie1394 has access to many things as part of the spec and that is easily internalised, see "recent" firewire security stuff:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/04/wi...rd_bypass_tool/ ). I am assuming we are not going completely old school and having cameras.
Software is a bit different and can work in many ways. Many will try to hide themselves from the casual observer (to the point they mimic some of the bad spyware I spend the odd bit of time removing from machines). I know of nothing in this realm that can not be circumvented by use of another OS, you can also try booting in safe mode as I doubt it will be able to wind itself into windows that well (if it can then it is better than any spyware I have gone up against) and take it down from there. Checking startup values is a method but not one that I can assure you works (I have run up against a few things that delete their entry and redo it before shutdown/next boot).
Remote monitoring.
1) Dial in screen grabber. Used by bosses everywhere, loading another OS stops it and if you can killing the process also works (see spyware above). You can also have local ones that log for later viewing. See 2) to try and detect this (unless you share files on your network there is little reason for stuff to be sent to computers in the order of magnitude that this requires, filters will tell you what is standard network traffic), logging hard drive access is easy and due to the way things work in computers (writing the same file from two apps is a bad idea hence having to lock the file to one app).
2) Network monitoring. Most data is sent unencrypted and as such can be read and reconstructed with the appropriate software (see the likes of wireshark). More importantly the IP you are connecting to is also able to be monitored so running a reverse dns is not hard. I would not rely on the fact you can hammer your connection at hundreds of kilobytes a second, filtering is piss easy to do.
Problems. A fair few sites offer SSL encryption (try https:// instead of http://) but not all do as it a drain on resources and it will not stop people resolving the site in the first place. TOR and ssh work by sending the data on a long journey in the case of tor (so it looks like it first goes somewhere innocuous) and ssh works by encrypting all traffic and sending it via another computer. You have to pay for the latter though.
A proxy does work (tor is a proxy chain) but some packet inspection (will say who is doing what) can still turn up some interesting things.
In there just for giggles. Site blocking.
I already mentioned DNS but for those not paying attention your computer does not have a clue what www.google.com is but it does know what
http://74.125.45.100 is DNS is little more than a list of IP addresses and their corresponding urls, most governments use this to some level (
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/11/pirate_bay_italy/ ) but people outside their purview run stuff like openDNS (which also offers a site blocking flavour). You can often tell your router to use openDNS instead of the ISP DNS server. As for logging they have something but I doubt your parents can get at it, as for the law well they have far more power than many would realise or care to know about.
Others use a proxy to filter things (see recent IWF brouhaha in the UK re wikipedia (although if I do say so blocking wikipedia is no bad thing from a getting rid of the trash point of view) and whatver else it has been doing)
Others use a the hosts file or similar to block "bad" sites.
Methods, whitelist: a list of allowed sites. Often blocks harmless ones. Usually DNS based and so SSH/tor bypasses it.
blacklist: list of blocked sites. Often allows bad ones through as it is easy enough to hijack an existing site or create a new one. Can be machine level or can be network level. Usually DNS based and so SSH/tor bypasses it.
greylist: usually tied into some form of checking software than will analyse page contents and then say whether to block or not. Try searching for biology homework or Dick Cheney with such things on. Some work on text and others on automated recognition of things (70% pink: probably porn sort of thing), some are system wide and some are browser level. Rarely you can have a human sitting the other end to check things as they come in.
A note on social engineering. Your parents presumably know who you are and as such can divine information about you that I would be willing to wager that you use or at least have let slip at some point (password a name of pet, band, actor, person, word...... you like) and the internet by definition is not local, they can get some info and look it up another way if they really wanted.
Easiest solution to the lot though: as close as it is to security by obscurity (a bad idea most of the time) find some stuff and give it to your parents to do (hint, usenet and a video player of some form like XBMC). Your social life is likely unutterably dull (most peoples are) and given the choice of new film/tv show or classics or extensive checking of sprogs where you have been given no reason to.....
