Are you spying on me apple

Do you have iPhoto set to check for updates at start-up?

Regards

TD

Adding to Terence's post, in iPhoto Preferences>General, if the "Check for Update" box at the bottom of the panel is selected, you'll receive notice of newer versions of iPhoto as they become available. Uncheck the box if you don't want to see this notice.

In this day of being connected to the Internet 24x7 via High-speed cable, quite common for automatic "check for updates" to be an option in various Apple Applications, including Software Update in System Preferences, as well as those of other developers. Rather than "spying", I call it "invited eavesdropping".

ignore



Message was edited by: First Magus

Tricky,

Definitely get yourself a copy of Little Snitch. I will give you a tremendous amount of peace of mind.

Here are a few examples of how your Mac is programmed to "phone home"...

1. *Address Book* -- if anyone in your address book has a .mac account, the program will phone home when you select their card. Supposedly this is done to see if they've updated their icon, at which point it will download their new icon. I don't know what else Address Book might be doing when phoning home but this behavior so unnerved me that I now have Little Snitch blocking all Internet access from Address Book.

2. iTunes -- when you open an audio CD in iTunes, your Mac connects to the Gracenote database (CDDB) and attempt to identify the CD. If it thinks it has a match, it will download the track names to your computer so that they appear in iTunes. At first this may seem like a great convenience. However, Gracenote doesn't always get it right, and sometimes the track names it returns are completely wrong. And if you create your own audio CD's (or write your own music, as I do) Gracenote would have no way of knowing what those tracks' names are. But instead of doing nothing, it will often download bogus track names.

So basically, the Gracenote database is tracking what CD's you're playing in iTunes.

Again, with Little Snitch you can shut off iTunes access to the Internet. And if you want to buy something from the iTunes store, you just temporarily disable Little Snitch.

Again, with Little Snitch you can shut off iTunes access to the Internet.

Does 'Little Snitch' also come with a tin foil hat to block signals from aliens? If not, see http://www.ericisgreat.com/tinfoilhats/index.html


🙂

I find that the Fez model offers the best protection myself! But we all know how clandestine those aliens wish to remain. And aside from an occasional saucer crash faux pas here, or crop circle "oops" there, in an attempt to contain their fiendish telepathic thoughts of an impending invasion of Earth from ever being detected by us humans, they wear hats made of deli meats held together with liver paté. It's no wonder that most alien abductees report of a really bad smell in the mothership...

🙂

1. Address Book -- if anyone in your address book has a .mac account, the program will phone home when you select their card. Supposedly this is done to see if they've updated their icon, at which point it will download their new icon. I don't know what else Address Book might be doing when phoning home but this behavior so unnerved me that I now have Little Snitch blocking all Internet access from Address Book.

Not that iChat won't go changing the icon via that route 😉
Whether they are @mac or not.

or Mail asking iChat who is On-line.

methinks the communal space blanket is needed 🙂



7:11 PM Sunday; August 12, 2007

Ah, so the plot thickens... Thanks for that info Ralph.

Meanwhile, a word of caution... if you ever find yourself in line ("queue" for our UK friends) at the deli for a half-pound of swiss, and the person in front of you is a kind of awkward little fellow with a strange accent that you can't quite place, if he orders 10 pounds of salami and some liver paté, I suggest you run like ****!

Why should I run ?

1) he is weighed down with 10Lbs of Salami
2) he has a bad heart from all that pate.



8:09 PM Sunday; August 12, 2007

Frankly, I would run at him, I love both salami and liver paté.

🙂



8:27 PM Sunday; August 12, 2007

Trickydicky wrote:
.....run......

Ah, so you see? These forums can offer not only a heads-up on how to use Apple hardware and software, but they can also help to keep you a safe distance from those who bequeathed computing technology to we earthlings in the first place.

Really, you don't think that we as a species were smart enough to come up with this stuff on our own, do you?

Now, you're lucky in that you encountered one of the more benign alien species. It's the Reptillians that you really want to avoid. So if you're ever in a pet store and some very tall, well-built guy with a bad skin condition asks for 100 mice "to go"...

🙂

Anyway, this thread has been fun and apparently informative for the OP.

Cheers everiuybjhb

(sorry, my fez fell off and hit the keyboard)

*Cheers everyone!*