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MacBook Theft Tracking & Recovery Software – Hidden

Dec 23, 2010 - 23 Comments

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

Apple disables jailbreak detection API in iOS 4.2.1

Dec 10, 2010 - 1 Comment

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

Enable IP Blocking when downloading torrents in Transmission

Nov 17, 2010 - 24 Comments

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

Bypass the iPhone Passcode in iOS 4.1

Oct 27, 2010 - 10 Comments

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

Mac Trojan Horse Discovered: Boonana/Koobface

Oct 27, 2010 - 10 Comments

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

Password Protect a Microsoft Word Document

Oct 24, 2010 - 6 Comments

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

Free Keylogger for Mac OS X – logkext

Oct 1, 2010 - 9 Comments

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

Lock your Mac via iPhone and take an iSight picture with login attempts

Sep 29, 2010 - 12 Comments

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.

Free Anti-Spyware for Mac

Sep 20, 2010 - 15 Comments

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

Disable the Sending of Location Services Data to Apple from a Mac with Snow Leopard

Sep 20, 2010 - 5 Comments

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.

Disable “application downloaded from the internet” Message on a Per-App Basis in Mac OS X

Sep 12, 2010 - 16 Comments

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

Run iPhone in James Bond Mode: Set your iPhone to Self Destruct and Erase All Data After Failed Password Attempts

Aug 12, 2010 - 26 Comments

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

Forgot Mac Password? How to Reset Your Mac Password (with or without CD)

Aug 10, 2010 - 508 Comments

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

IPFW GUI front end for Mac OS X: WaterRoof

Aug 4, 2010 - 1 Comment

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

FileVault and QuickLook leak some information from encrypted volumes in Mac OS

Jul 25, 2010 - 15 Comments

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

Disable iPhone GPS & Geographic Tagging Data in iPhone Photos

Jul 9, 2010 - 8 Comments
Disabling Camera Location EXIF data on iPhone

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

Disable the Internal Microphone on your Mac

Jun 25, 2010 - 36 Comments
Disable Microphone on Mac

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

Opt out of iAd location and data tracking cookies

Jun 23, 2010 - 5 Comments

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

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