It appears that Macnn pulled the story shortly after I posted - there's no
sign of it on their main page either.
Marc Fossi
Symantec Corp.
www.symantec.com
On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, Simon Slavin wrote:
>
> On 5 Jul 2006, at 9:55pm, mfossi (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed] wrote:
>
>> I've seen two stories today about Apple components phoning home with info -
>> one saying Dashboard does it, the other saying Mail.app does as well. Has
>> anyone looked into it? If these stories are true, exactly what information
>> is being sent back and forth? I'm not currently in an environment where I
>> can test either one with my MBP.
>>
>> Dashboard:
>> http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/07/05/dashboard.calls.home/
>
> The 10.4.7 update introduces a new feature into Dashboard: every 8 hours it
> make a list of your widgets and which version they each are, then sends this
> list to one of Apple's servers. The server checks to see if there are later
> versions available for each widget and sends back a list of URLs the later
> versions can be downloaded from. (Explanation simplified for brevity.)
>
> The information communicated is restricted to a list of which widgets
> (including version numbers) you have installed on your computer, and the IP
> address of your computer so that the list of URLs can be returned to it. No
> other information is transmitted. The fact that the transmission happens, of
> course, reveals that you're running 10.4.7. It's impossible to tell if Apple
> retain this information after the session is finished.
>
> Amazingly, it did not occur to Apple that people might not like this,
> especially since they weren't told about it, and Apple did not include any
> simple way of turning it off. You could kill the 'dashboardadvisoryd'
> process, and rename it so that it can't be restarted at the next reboot. You
> could mess with
>
> /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist
>
> presumably by changing 'OnDemand' to false. You could unload the Dashboard
> Advisory daemon. I have not tried any of these solutions.
>
>> Mail:
>> http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/07/05/mail.phones.home/
>
> I had not heard that Mail phoned home, and the URL you supplied gives a 404.
>
> Simon
> --
> Simon Slavin Fylde Building Room C11
> Computing Development Officer 01524 65201 x 93569
> Psychology Department
> University of Lancaster
>
>
sign of it on their main page either.
Marc Fossi
Symantec Corp.
www.symantec.com
On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, Simon Slavin wrote:
>
> On 5 Jul 2006, at 9:55pm, mfossi (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed] wrote:
>
>> I've seen two stories today about Apple components phoning home with info -
>> one saying Dashboard does it, the other saying Mail.app does as well. Has
>> anyone looked into it? If these stories are true, exactly what information
>> is being sent back and forth? I'm not currently in an environment where I
>> can test either one with my MBP.
>>
>> Dashboard:
>> http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/07/05/dashboard.calls.home/
>
> The 10.4.7 update introduces a new feature into Dashboard: every 8 hours it
> make a list of your widgets and which version they each are, then sends this
> list to one of Apple's servers. The server checks to see if there are later
> versions available for each widget and sends back a list of URLs the later
> versions can be downloaded from. (Explanation simplified for brevity.)
>
> The information communicated is restricted to a list of which widgets
> (including version numbers) you have installed on your computer, and the IP
> address of your computer so that the list of URLs can be returned to it. No
> other information is transmitted. The fact that the transmission happens, of
> course, reveals that you're running 10.4.7. It's impossible to tell if Apple
> retain this information after the session is finished.
>
> Amazingly, it did not occur to Apple that people might not like this,
> especially since they weren't told about it, and Apple did not include any
> simple way of turning it off. You could kill the 'dashboardadvisoryd'
> process, and rename it so that it can't be restarted at the next reboot. You
> could mess with
>
> /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist
>
> presumably by changing 'OnDemand' to false. You could unload the Dashboard
> Advisory daemon. I have not tried any of these solutions.
>
>> Mail:
>> http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/07/05/mail.phones.home/
>
> I had not heard that Mail phoned home, and the URL you supplied gives a 404.
>
> Simon
> --
> Simon Slavin Fylde Building Room C11
> Computing Development Officer 01524 65201 x 93569
> Psychology Department
> University of Lancaster
>
>
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