Though you can add anything to Spotlights Privacy list to prevent indexing of that folder or file, the obvious problem with that approach is the file or folder is shown within the Spotlight control panel in Mac OS X, making it easy for someone else to find the excluded items. Another way to hide a … Read More
Want to quickly hide a file from prying eyes? Just like you can hide folders, you can hide individual files too. Here is how to do this using the command line tool chflags. Launch Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/ and use the following command syntax: chflags nohidden /path/to/hide/file.txt If you know the path to the file just … Read More
Want to delete a text message or conversation thread from an iPhone? Maybe it’s a regretful SMS, a security risk, or just an embarrassing iMessage conversation from after you had too much to drink, whatever it is you can quickly delete an entire conversation or even selectively delete only certain parts of a message thread, … Read More
The lock screen of an iPhone (or iPad, iPod touch) defaults to showing a preview of all received Messages and SMS, showing both the senders name and the content of their text message. That can be very convenient, but it also has the potential for oversharing private information and dialog between others, which could lead … Read More
Chrome’s “Most Visited” thumbnails capture snapshots of the websites you most frequently access. These thumbnails can very convenient but they can also be embarrassing, thankfully they are fairly easy to clear out: How to Remove Thumbnails from Chrome Most Visited List on Mac Quit Chrome From the Mac Finder, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following … Read More
Read Receipts show the sender of a message that a message has been delivered these are enabled by default in iMessages for iOS, but they are disabled by default in Message for Mac. If you’re interested in having the read receipts sent along with each message received on your Mac, you can toggle a setting … Read More
Spotlight is a wonderful feature of Mac OS X that lets you quickly find literally anything on a Mac by search, that includes files, apps, folders, emails, you name it, and Spotlight will find it, but sometimes you don’t want everything to be indexed. Whether that’s an external backup drive, a scratch disk, a directory … Read More
Command line users who wish to add an additional layer of security to their keyboarding within Terminal app can find a helpful privacy feature built into the Mac client. Whether aiming for generally increasing security, if using a public Mac, or are simply concerned about things like keyloggers or any other potentially unauthorized access to … Read More
The iPhone can be set to always hide the dialing phones number from the recipients caller ID’s. That means that if you turn off the “Show My Caller ID” feature, every call you make will not show up on the phone number you are calling, offering additional privacy to phone calls made from your iPhone. … Read More
Notification Center in iOS makes it easier than ever to see when new messages and mail comes in to your device, but if you receive sensitive or private emails on your iPhone or iPad, you may not want them showing up on the lock screen at all. If you’d rather not see any alert or … Read More
iOS allows you to enable private browsing in Safari for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This feature is sometimes called “Incognito Mode” with other browsers, and essentially this lets you browse the web and visit web sites without saving a record of any browser history, cache, logins, or searches, and it prevents cookies from … Read More
Want to hide some files in plain sight on a Mac? This walkthrough will detail how you can make an invisible folder on the Mac that features some unique properties; the invisible folder will be invisible to the eye when browsing in Finder, but the folder will not be invisible to the click. Instead, you’ll … Read More
Knowing how to clear browser history, cookies, and cache are absolutely essential for all web users, and this is no different for anyone using an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. This is particularly true when you’re using a someone elses hardware or when you’re testing out iterative changes on websites. Keeping this in mind, here’s … Read More
Note: This feature is currently only in Lion Dev Previews, but it will likely come to a Safari update for existing versions of Mac OS X in the near future. Safari 5.1 in Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2 has added a new feature that blocks cookie tracking used by online marketers. Cookie tracking … Read More
iPhone backups contain a huge amount of personal data, from various account and service logins, contact list and phone logs, personal notes, emails, health data, messages, fully readable SMS conversations, just about anything that is used or stored on the device gets placed in the backup file. That’s excellent for backup restoration purposes, but technically … Read More
You may know that iPhone users can opt to turn off Caller Id on their iPhone to always make blocked calls from that number and phone, this means when your calls will show up as “blocked” to the recipients phone all the time. But you may not want to block every call all the time, … Read More
If you’re looking for a discrete and barebones keylogger for Mac OS X, logkext will likely fit the bill. For the unfamiliar, a key logger does what it sounds like; it quite literally records every single key press and key stroke on a computer, and stores that typing data within an encrypted log file so … Read More
Here’s something you might not know. Your Mac will periodically send out anonymized data to Apple with location specific information, the intended use is for providing location based services to it’s customers with Apple products. But in Mac OS X Snow Leopard you can turn this off and disable the location feature.
