Altomac has launched a new background surveillance application for the Mac, User Monitor. It is geared towards work and classroom environments, and records actions by way of screenshots taken at user-scheduled intervals. The software operates in the background, and can be set to monitor a single Mac or multiple machines on a network.

It can also be set to record specific actions from all applications, or just a set of administrator-designated ones. To prevent targets from interfering with monitoring, a password can be used to block access.

User Monitor 1.0 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, and costs $50 under a single-user license. A five-computer license is $80, while 12 computers can be covered for $150.