There's monitoring software marketed towards parents, which I think for most parents would meet your concerns (ease of use, risk of malware, legality).
If the parent has access to the computer, then they'll generally already have all documents, browser/application history, and chat logs.
> Now contrast that with a 100% legal and already preinstalled keylogger 2.0, which is not only logging keypresses
Windows Recall doesn't log keypresses, to my understanding.
> Like walking past unattended unlocked PC and voila - you can check all history without going back in time to install keylogger in advance.
I feel extracting browser passwords and all their documents would typically be more damaging.
Why would that be worse when you have screenshots of everything they saw, typed, uploaded and broadcast? Passwords give you an account - this gives you everything done with the account. And all documents that were viewed, plus where they came from. This is way beyond passwords.
> Passwords give you an account - this gives you everything done with the account.
Passwords give you control - not just view-only access. You could transfer over much of what they own (money, servers, games, projects, ...) to yourself, use their identity for phishing their friends/colleagues, etc.
Even just for viewing data, I think having all files and passwords can be a greater level of invasion:
* You don't just have screenshots of some files they happened to open recently on this device (which for some formats, like audio, is useless) - you have every file they have saved on this device, every file they have in online/cloud storage, and every file on work network shares they have access to
* You don't just have a screenshot of them typing a subset of recent emails and chat messages - you have their full emails and chatlogs going back years, and can likely make a data access request to get a significantly larger portion of "everything done with the account" than recent snapshots would give you
* You don't just have their location the couple of times recent snapshots show Google Maps open - you have full location history from their phone
If the parent has access to the computer, then they'll generally already have all documents, browser/application history, and chat logs.
> Now contrast that with a 100% legal and already preinstalled keylogger 2.0, which is not only logging keypresses
Windows Recall doesn't log keypresses, to my understanding.
> Like walking past unattended unlocked PC and voila - you can check all history without going back in time to install keylogger in advance.
I feel extracting browser passwords and all their documents would typically be more damaging.