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Employee Monitoring Glossary
Screenshot Monitoring
Periodic image captures of employee screens during work sessions — providing visual proof of work and enabling quality assurance at scale.
Definition
Screenshot monitoring is the practice of capturing periodic images of an employee's computer screen during work sessions. A desktop agent takes screenshots at a configurable frequency (typically every 5, 10, or 15 minutes) during active work time, encrypts them, and uploads them to the employer's monitoring dashboard. Screenshots provide visual proof of work and enable managers to spot quality issues, policy violations, or disengagement without reviewing every second of activity data.
Privacy Controls
- Smart Blur — automatically detects and blurs passwords, payment card numbers, personal data, and other sensitive content in screenshots before they are stored
- Privacy Mode — employees can pause all screenshot capture during personal breaks; managers see the pause occurred but not what was on screen
- Employee access — employees can view all their own screenshots in TheDeskMonitor's employee portal
- Configurable retention — screenshots are automatically deleted after 7-90 days (your choice)
- Work hours only — capture is automatically inactive outside configured work schedules