If your parents have given you a cell phone or if you use a phone that has been issued by your employer, then your mobile phone activities may be under surveillance.

Retina-X Studios has just released the sixth generation of its Mobile Spy software for smartphones. The new version includes both application blocking and many social media monitoring features.

Mobile Spy’s standard features include SMS monitoring, GPS tracking, photo monitoring and call logging. To these standard features, Version 6.0 includes the ability to monitor nine different social media channels including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry PIN Messenger, GTalk, Twitter (News - Alert) and others.

Mobile phone monitoring is an appealing feature for parents who are worried about their teens’ cell phone activity.

“You think you know your kids, but they are totally different people when they're around their friends,” points out Mae Belgrave, a South Florida parent who uses Mobile Spy to monitor her daughter’s cell phone. “So, you just worry about them, and the cell phone gives them so much freedom these days. She's responsible. We just wanted to take that extra precaution.”

“Technology can be dangerous in the hands of a teenager,” agrees Retina-X CEO, John Jacobs. “What if a stranger is trying to take advantage of them on Facebook (News - Alert)? Are they sending naughty photos and deleting them afterward?”

In addition to monitoring social media activity, Mobile Spy 6.0 allows administrators to view the applications downloaded to the device and to forcibly block any inappropriate downloads. Gmail messages and YouTube (News - Alert) views are now also reported on the software.

Additionally, the spy software can monitor phone usage and can track activity to report how much time the user spends on each activity. In other words, if you’re playing Free Cell on your workplace mobile phone, the boss is now going to know about it.

In addition to slacking off, however, employees could use cell phones for a variety of non-work-related purposes. For instance, a nurse was denied unemployment benefits in Pennsylvania last year for using a cell phone to post to Facebook while working. The nurse was administering medication to patients while simultaneously posting about a colleague who had accidentally soiled her pants.

The hospital discovered the Facebook post and immediately fired the nurse. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania also denied unemployment benefits to the fired employee.

Phones can also be used to copy and distribute confidential or proprietary information. Some employees have used their mobile phones to distract or harass other employees with lewd or offensive photos. If employees take photos of potential safety issues, then employers can face severe liability charges. These are all reasons that employers choose to monitor employee cell phone use.

Mobile Spy 6.0 is available here. The program works on the Android (News - Alert), iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems.