Melissa Holt, writing for the Mac Observer:

Today, though, I’m going to talk about enabling Remote Management to monitor what your children are doing at any given moment while they’re on your home network. I’m not saying this should necessarily be the first thing you do to keep your kids safe online, but hey, if the little buttheads keep doing stuff they’re not supposed to or that might endanger them, you gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

Melissa’s post does a nice job walking you through the settings that let you watch someone else’s screen, with or without them being aware that you are watching them.

As a parent, I can understand the temptation to watch over your kid’s shoulder to make sure what they are doing is safe. You love your kids and worry constantly. I get it.

But I struggle with the anonymous part of this.

If you want to be stealthy, choose “Observe” only; that way, the child won’t know you’re logged in. But you can also decide to control things, change settings, and so on. Click “OK” when you’ve got things configured, and you’re done!

Now how do you dial in from your own Mac and watch what that dastardly kid is doing? Easy peasy. Just open a Finder window by clicking on the blue smiley face in your Dock, and then under “Shared” in the sidebar, you should see the kid’s Mac appear.

This just isn’t for me. I love the idea of remote management, especially since it makes it easy for me to help my parents or others when they need help with their computer. But the anonymous watching just feels creepy, especially given Apple’s commitment to privacy.