If you’re in IT, or just fixing Grandmas Mac, it’s not too uncommon to get a machine where you don’t have the admin users password. If you find yourself in this situation, you can easily change the Admin password, or any other users, simply by booting into Mac OS X‘s command line Single User Mode. … Read More
This whole iPhone location tracker thing is getting a crazy amount of attention, and everyone seems surprised that a mobile device with a gazillion apps that ask for your location actually keeps track of your location. But, if you don’t want your location tracked, all you have to do is encrypt your iPhone & iOS … 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
We’ve shown a few different ways of how to lock your Mac screen with a keystroke or a hot corner, but another option is to lock the screen and desktop of your Mac through a little-known Mac OS X menu bar item. The result is a little lock icon in the menu bar of OS … 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
There are several steps to password protect a Mac, we’ll cover the essentials so that if someone is to turn on your Mac, wake it from a screensaver, or wake from sleep, they will be required to enter a password in order to use the computer.
Any time that you are away from your computer, it’s a good idea to lock the screen. This provides a level of privacy and security to the Mac that is very easy to use and implement and it should be considered a must-use trick, particularly for anyone working in public spaces, offices, schools, or anywhere … Read More
Hidden is theft tracking software for Mac OS X that works to help you recover your stolen MacBook Pro (or MacBook Air, MacBook, and any other Mac OS X machine really). It works by laying dormant on your Mac until you visit the Hidden website and mark your computer as stolen, this then activates the … Read More
Network World is reporting that Apple has disabled their jailbreak detection API in the latest iOS 4.2.1 update. The API was originally bundled into iOS 4.0 and gave Apple and third party vendors the ability to detect jailbreaks by finding changes to the iOS system software. According to the report, Apple has not provided a … Read More
Transmission has a built-in IP blocklist for what are determined to be “bad peers” and it should be enabled if you use Transmission with any sort of regularity. The blocklist helps to insure a better experience with torrents and also helps to protect your privacy. How to enable the IP Blocklist for downloading torrents in … Read More
Note: You can reset an iPhone passcode but you will lose data on the iPhone. This works on all iPhone and iOS versions, whereas the tip below describes a vulnerability in iOS 4.1 only. There’s a significant security hole that effects iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS users running iOS 4.1. The hole allows a user … Read More
A trojan horse has been discovered that affects Mac OS X users, dubbed “trojan.osx.boonana.a” or ‘Koobface.’ An infected machine will hijack users social network accounts and attempt to spread the trojan further by sending out spam messages from your username. Thus far the trojan has been spread through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and eMail. Here is … Read More
You can password protect a Microsoft Office and Microsoft Word document quite easily, this is a great feature to keep sensitive documents completely private, such as your finances or a personal journal. Once the password is set, anyone trying to open the file will be required to enter a password within Word. If the document … 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
RedHand is a pretty powerful Mac security app with a creepy icon that locks your computer using a myriad of protection options and scripting support, but I think the two best features by far are these: Bluetooth detection locking & unlocking, and the ability to take iSight pictures on failed login attempts.
Who doesn’t love free software? MacScan is a full service anti-spyware detection tool for Mac OS X and for a short time is available entirely for free, so you need to jump on this one quick. For a limited time only (just today: 9/20) you can download this anti-spyware tool for FREE. Get the free … 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.
Mac OS X warns users in a variety of different ways if they have downloaded a file from the internet to their Mac, with a popup message that says something along the lines of “[NAME] is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?”, or even “this application can’t … Read More
