dashboardadvisoryd

It's a daemon that is checking to see if the Dashboard widgets from Apple are the same as the ones Apple included in your system. It should only be running about every 8 hours when your Mac is on and awake.

You can disable it via Activity Monitor, though it will start again next time your boot your Mac. If you can find it, you can delete it altogether; just have a backup copy nearby in case your system won't start or function normally.

Mulder

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iMac G4 700Mhz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

It is mentioned in the following URL:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303771

"You can now verify whether or not a Dashboard widget you downloaded is the same version as a widget featured on (www.apple.com) before installing it."

Mihalis.

Does anyone know how to turn this unilateral intrusion off?

Update: I've removed Dashboard from the Applications ƒ, and the Widgets ƒ from /Library. I understand that my computer - the one I thought I owned - now places a call to Apple about once every eight hours or so.

To check the validity and freshness of the Widgets. Right.

Every eight hours, three times a day, 21X per week, 1092 times annually. Man, Widgets sure are important 🙂

I've launched Dashboard once and was so appalled, I've never used it since. Why does the equipment I supposedly own get hijacked every eight hours for no reason at all?

What hidden, invisible file - a string within I'm sure we can all modify - is the perpetrator here? Nothing personal against Apple, and no moral judgment being passed or anything like that - I just don't like being forced to do something I wouldn't ever do to begin with! 🙂

Anybody have any clues as to where this puppy resides? Thanks!

Matt, a number of blogs have been tracking this. Here is how to turn it off according to the Red Sweater Blog:

Launch a window and enter:

sudo mv /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist /etc/mach_init.d/
dashboardadvisoryd.plist.disabled

Then reboot.

You can just disable it with launchctl, the standard way to interact with launchd:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dashboard.advisory.fetch.plist

Thanks for the quick response but please note - a post on that same blog, after trying this command line fix, reported: "...dashboardadvisoryd still tried to contact Apple, despite all noticeable activity by dashboard seeming to have been stopped. Just FYI. If anyone knows something else to try, please post it."

I'm waiting to see what happens in LittleSnitch now that all Widgets and the Dashboard application have been completely eradicated from my system.

Wouldn't it be ironic if this was the solution, and Apple ended up forcing hundreds of thousands of users to actually eliminate Dashboard and all their system Widgets? 🙂

I think they're trying to err on the side of caution - plenty of people don't like that it phones home, no matter how innocuous it is in this particular case. Plenty more people will feel free to complain if a trojan attacks their computer via Dashboard...

Won't happen if you remove Dashboard and all those ridiculous Widgets.

No need to remove it, just set a BOOL in the dashboard preference file:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

You can use NO to turn Dashboard back on.

I don't want to over-react but I'm starting to think that it's very important that this application and all it's components be purged from every Macintosh system. Perhaps now that Apple has lost their court case attempting to overturn the First Amendment, they're backdooring their way into at least having the ability to gather specific data when they believe they may need it. This may not be the case now, evidenced by the seemingly innocous call being generated but again, this is now. Who will monitor this new functionality on an on-going basis henceforth to ensure compliance? And why should we have to constantly be looking over our shoulders?

If Widgets are so suspect and remarkably fragile that they must be double checked and verified 1,092 times a year, why in heavens name would anyone serious about their computing experience and work platform want them in their system?

That's a false dichotomy. The software could inform us what it's doing, and could give us the option to easily turn it off. Automatic home-phoning could still be available as an option and as a default (like Software Updates). Being courteous and up-front does not automatically lead to an epidemic of trojan attacks.

Sorry, I was responding to the statement "Plenty more people will feel free to complain if a trojan attacks their computer via Dashboard..."

Considering the millions of lines of other code on the system that Apple provides... well, I guess if you gotta start somewhere!

Agreed, a preference pane for dashboard advisor would be a good thing.