I'm looking for a good network surveillance tool to put on a server close to the home gateway that is capable of monitoring MSN/Jabber chats and social media activities.
I am not interested in a lengthy ethical discussion on the usage of such tools, and realise there are loads of valid arguments on both the pros and cons.

So back to the technical question at hand - is there either a daemon or plugin to squid or other tools that allows me to log all conversations or message posts on various social networkin sites such as Facebook?

Thanks in advance for any insight!!

Don't know, but I'd be interested if you find something. The closest I've got would be something like Webwatcher, which isn't very close because it's client is installed on the workstations, but it can monitor chats and emails etc.

There's nothing for Squid...it's a proxy server, not a packet capture/analyzer, which is what you're talking about.

You do realize, that there's nothing that'll work 100%, right? If you wanted to capture chat, you'd have to actually analyze each packet, and decode the payloads. For example, you can chat within Yahoo and Google mail, via their web page. Runs over HTTP/HTTPS...so unless you capture EVERYTHING, and sniff it, whatever you put in place is easily circumvented. Add to that, the fact that ANYONE can put up their own Jabber server, running on ANY port they'd like...and that anyone can put their own web server up at home, to act as a proxy, and you're setting yourself up for failure.

Add to that, the fact that if ANYONE catches on that you're reading their mail, listening to their chats, etc., say hello to a lawsuit. Regardless of the whole 'work time/resources' argument, you'll still wind up in court.

Are you familiar with http://www.snort.org I use that and it tells you what activity is going on pretty well.

That's a traffic monitor/intrusion detector. The OP was asking about actual logging of the conversations/data capture.

I understand, but I just don't like this. Particularly when you do not provide any additional information to justify your approach.

If you are referring to an "at home" situation (family), you had better make it absolutely clear that "daddy" is monitoring, and recording, all computer communications. If your children are above legal age, you may not be permitted to do this, even at home.

If you are referring to an "at work" situation (employees), you need to have written policies that your employees have read, and signed up to, before you implement this degree of intrusion: they are on their lunch break, they check their bank, you are sniffing or recording this = Bad, and you are putting yourself at risk.

Disclaimer: IANAL

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Thanks for the input everyone. So far we've come up blank for the tools.

As for the ethical side, this is for someone with a child with a drug-problem. As a parent myself this is one of my greatest fears and even though my child is still only a toddler, I can only sympathise with their desperate need to do do _everything_ in their power. I know this is by far not the only thing considered/done, but if she thinks it'll help in any way, I'm going to help her in any way I can. Since I am so fortunate as to have no experience in any other parts of this nightmare, I'm researching this without any regards to lesser problems. I've made the pros and cons quite clear to them, but am not one to judge either way.

I have never used it but this may be of interest.
http://imsniffer.sourceforge.net/

There is tools yes (wireshark) but using them for what your proposing is something which is very very difficult. Each of these networks (MSN, facebook, jabber, etc etc) uses different protocols to send messages to and fro, and you'd need to log all the traffic, and then convert it into some kind of human readable format (You can just look at it but its not always very readable without first cleaning it up).

Plus, if a parent doesn't trust a child with a computer, theres a better solution. Take the computer away. Of course this is just my opinion.