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
There’s a pretty interesting feature included in iOS that lets you run your iPhone in James Bond mode, causing the device to self destruct if an incorrect password is entered 10 times concurrently. Ok, well it’s not really called James Bond mode and it doesn’t actually self destruct, but it does erase all the data … Read More
So you forgot your Mac password… uh oh. Don’t worry, it happens and you aren’t out of luck. You’ll need to reset the forgotten password and there’s several ways to do this, we’ll focus on the three best methods; the first is dirt simple and will utilize the Apple ID (yes, the same on you … Read More
The Mac firewall has long been based on IPFW, a robust and strong software firewall that comes form the unix world. But managing IPFW usually requires digging around in the command line, so as I was recently looking around for a Mac OS X GUI to IPFW, I came across WaterRoof. If you’re looking for … Read More
If you use FileVault and QuickLook on a Mac you may want to know that the combination of the two may leak some sensitive information from encrypted volumes. Reader Jack R. sent in the following tip, explaining the situation further: When FileVault and QuickLook are used concurrently, information about what files are stored on the … Read More
Want to disable iPhone GPS geotagging of photos and the camera? Many users may wish to turn off geotagging on iPhone photos for privacy reasons. In case you didn’t know, the iPhone Camera defaults to storing GPS and geographic tagging information in the EXIF data of your iPhone images. If you don’t want this type … Read More
All Macs have a microphone included in them, but if you want to disable the internal microphone on your Mac, you can do so through a variety of methods. We’ll cover the two easiest approaches to turning off the microphone; reducing the input volume so that no sound is picked up by the microphone, and … Read More
You can opt out of Apple’s new iAd location and data tracking service, which will use gathered data on you to serve targeted ads through Apple’s new iAds platform. To opt out of iAd cookies, visit http://oo.apple.com from the device you wish to opt out with. Note that you must be running the latest iOS … Read More
Spyware is generally something you don’t have to worry about on the Mac, but TheLoop is reporting that a company named ‘7art-screensavers’ is releasing malware on the Mac platform with a series of free screensaver downloads. Apparently the screensavers themselves do not include the spyware, but they attempt to download and install the “OSX/OpinionSpy” app … Read More
If you’re like me, you store a lot of information on your iPhone that you want to keep private. Accordingly, you might be interested to know that, by default, the backups made from an iOS device to iTunes are not encrypted, and can be dug through rather freely if someone was interested in doing so. … Read More
If you want to be absolutely sure your data is wiped clean with virtually no chance of recovery, by anyone, using any possible known recovery tools, look no further than Apple’s Disk Utility tool. The process is simple, and it can apply to any Mac drive, whether that’s an internal hard drive, external hard drive, … Read More
PeerGuardian is a free open source tool that allows you to easily block large numbers of IP addresses in Mac OS X. It automatically maintains an internal IP blacklist to block IP’s deemed unsafe or dubious in nature, and also allows for multiple IP lists with the ability to block entire protocols. Other features include … Read More
If you want to beef up the security on your Mac with a simple settings adjustment, you can enable the built-in software firewall. This offers a layer of protection by blocking many ports for common protocols, incoming connections, and other potential attack vectors. Generally, the Mac OS X Firewall is not necessary to use for … Read More
Want to find out how to see all startup and login app launches and scripts on a Mac? This article will walk through that process. Gone are the days of Mac OS System 9 where all startup items were sitting nicely in a system folder labeled ‘Startup’, now with the Unix undercore of Mac OS … Read More
In some situations, you may wish to disable access to the System Preferences on a Mac. Often this is for lab environments or public use workstations, or perhaps for locking down a particular workstation for various reasons. While a common approach is to create a new user account that has limited access to system features … Read More
If you need to prevent the Dock icons from changing or being modified on a Mac, you can use defaults command strings to lock down the OS X Dock and prevent any adjustments or changes to how it appears on screen.
You can set Mac OS X to always securely empty the Trash and add a significant layer of security when removing files from the Mac. This is done just by adjusting a preference setting within the Finder, and it’s very easy to configure, here’s what you will want to do to use this option:
