Tag Archives: security

Apple confirms iOS 12 will close iPhone security hole used by police and criminals

By Paul | Published June 14, 2018

James Martin writing at CNET: Apple will make a method — often used by police — for getting data off iPhones much less powerful with a software update announced Wednesday. The change, called USB Restricted Mode, will close down access to data through a iPhone’s Lightning port if the phone hasn’t been unlocked in the […]

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Apple Is Making Password Management Easier in iOS 12

By Paul | Published June 7, 2018

Christina Bonnington writing at Slate: Apple is making some noteworthy changes to the way its devices handle passwords, changes that should help smartphone users better manage their passwords—and perhaps use better password practices in general. In iOS 12, Apple will be giving developers access to a new Password Manager API. This API will work with […]

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Farewell, AirPort… dammit!

By Paul | Published April 27, 2018

AppleInsider: After over a year on life support, Apple’s AirPort base stations are lurching to a final end. AppleInsider is waxing nostalgic about it, and we aren’t very happy. Nor am I. I have an AirPort Extreme and two AirPort Express “extenders.” Truth be told, I’ve been looking to replace them lately, but I’ve secretly […]

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Apple statement on ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’

By Paul | Published January 5, 2018

Apple: Security researchers have recently uncovered security issues known by two names, Meltdown and Spectre. These issues apply to all modern processors and affect nearly all computing devices and operating systems. All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time. Since exploiting many of these […]

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Google collects Android users’ locations even when location services are disabled

By Paul | Published November 27, 2017

Keith Collins at Quartz: Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card? Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to […]

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Terms and Conditions May Apply

By Paul | Published May 13, 2014

You know, it occurred to me several years ago, that if I could “Like” something on Facebook from another website, then Facebook was tracking me. I log in and out–even on my iPhone–every time I use Facebook (or Google, for that matter)… If you don’t, or don’t know why you should, you may want to […]

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Boot Camp and Mountain Lion’s FileVault 2 full disk encryption

By Paul | Published October 21, 2012

Setting up full disk encryption in OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” — even with a Boot Camp partition — is simple. In fact, it’s the same deal as with OS X 10.7 “Lion” (see my post from February). Couldn’t be simpler…

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Essential Rules of Gunfighting Everyone Should Know

By Paul | Published September 11, 2012

(You may someday have to apply one or more of these…) 1) Bring a gun; when possible, bring at least two guns, all of your friends that have guns and FOUR TIMES the ammunition you think you could ever need. 2) Guns have only two enemies: rust and inexperience. a) Practice. Practice reloading one-handed and […]

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Gatekeeper in OS X “Mountain Lion” looks like a step in the right direction

By Paul | Published March 1, 2012

Rich Mogull writing at TidBITS: There are three ways to attack a computer — gain physical access, hit it over the network, or trick the user into running something they shouldn’t. Macs are reasonably well protected against two of the three. If you use a strong password and encrypt your hard disk using FileVault, only […]

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Boot Camp and Lion’s FileVault 2 full disk encryption

By Paul | Published February 19, 2012

So I decided that this weekend was the time that I’d finally get around to applying Lion’s FileVault 2 full disk encryption to my Macs. Yeah, I know, I should have done it a LONG time ago, but hey–better late than never. The hurdle I had to clear was the Boot Camp partitions on my […]

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