Category: Privacy

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Questions and Answers

by straitmacvp

For our October meeting, we had no planned program, but instead an extended Question and Answer (Q&A) session on almost anything concerning Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, etc. And we recorded it:

For a larger view, click on the YouTube logo.

URLs of items mentioned in the meeting:

Take Control Books: https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/

A discount code for Take Control Books is posted on the Discussion Boards.

Google begs Apple to change Messages: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs-apple-for-mercy-in-messaging-war/

Good luck with that.

Guide to Apple TV+: https://9to5mac.com/2022/10/14/apple-tv-plus-tv-shows-movies-guide/

This is exceptional: short, capsule summaries of the series or movies, complete with a video clip or trailer.

Use your iPhone as a white noise generator: https://www.theverge.com/23131327/how-to-iphone-white-noise-background-sounds-ios-15

Hidden in plain sight.

Notes from the meeting will follow.

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Questions and answers

by straitmacvp

One of our members suggested I post a link to Macworld’s 911 column. This has been an ongoing series where subscribers to the magazines ask common questions, and Macworld posts answers. The answers are well written, and (usually) very good. Here is a recent collection:

https://www.macworld.com/article/228117/your-top-questions-to-mac-911-and-some-answers.html

Sometimes the advertising gets in the way, but the writing is down to earth.

A tip: if you ever try to do something on your Mac or iPad or iPhone and can’t figure out how, back off a bit and try to think of the task more generically. In other words, don’t try and obsess over what you are trying to do at that particular moment but, rather, think of what other people might do with whatever tool you are using. Sometimes you may find that you are using the wrong tool, and another tool is a better choice. Or you might decide this is the right tool, but you are approaching the problem from the wrong perspective.

Such as: someone wrote to me a few weeks ago convinced that they had a virus. Their Mac wasn’t working, and everything was very slow. The answer was less scary and less intrusive: the hard disk was full. Not absolutely crammed, but too full to work reliably. (To even use a web browser, you need several gigabytes — sometimes tens of gigabytes — worth of free disk space). Copying stuff off to another drive freed up space, and the computer was faster and more reliable.

Administrivia

Urgent Western Digital MyBook alert

by straitmacvp

Many users have a Western Digital MyBook external drive, either for storing data or for use as a Time Machine storage unit. These units were routinely sold at Costco, BestBuy, Amazon, and other retailers, and offer lots of storage space at a low price.

However, while we recommend that everyone immediately erase and reformat any storage device they buy, before putting it to use, and not install any software that comes with the device, most people don’t do any of these things. This is proving to be a problem, as hackers have found a way to reach across the Internet to the MyBook drives, and use the custom software to wipe out all data.

You can find a discussion of the problem here:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/06/mybook-users-urged-to-unplug-devices-from-internet/

What to do if you have a MyBook

If you own a Western Digital external drive, it is probably a MyBook. While the current alert is only for the MyBook Live and MyBook Duo models, the underlying software for all MyBooks is pretty much the same. Unless you are absolutely, positively certain you did erase and reformat the drive before using it, and you did not activate Western Digital’s software, you should:

  • Buy another external drive compatible with your Mac. If your Mac has USB 3.0 ports, an external USB 3.0 drive should work, regardless of manufacturer. Do not get a USB 1.1 or 2.0 drive.
  • Use Disk Utility (in your Utilities directory) to erase the drive, and then reformat the drive. Depending on which version of macOS you are using, exactly how this is presented may differ, but after erasure, you want to make sure the drive is formatted as macOS Extended.
  • After preparing your new drive, copy everything off your Western Digital MyBook to the new drive.
  • Once everything is copied, use Disk Utility to erase and reformat the MyBook. At that point, you can use the MyBook for whatever you want, including using it as a Time Machine storage.

In the words of the Mandalorian, “This is the way.” There is no simpler shortcut: you need to transfer everything off your MyBook to another drive, and completely erase and reformat your MyBook. You need to do this right now.

Note that the article mentions Western Digital considers these devices “obsolete” and they are no longer covered by Western Digital warranty or product support. It is entirely up to you to protect yourself.

Administrivia

Terms and Conditions game

by lcharters2014

At the last meeting, we talked about, among other things, Apple’s changes to their App Store and how they helped protect your privacy. To take the most controversial change, Apple changed the rules for iPhones and iPad applications, forcing the apps to explicitly ask to track your behavior.

Facebook has launched a massive lobbying and advertising assault on Apple, claiming this is anti-consumer, as it doesn’t allow Facebook to carefully craft advertisements and promotions to the user. Apple has pretty much ignored Facebook’s assault, focusing on explaining the change and pretending Facebook doesn’t exist.

But there is another avenue for privacy breeches that users often overlook: Terms and Conditions. Almost nobody reads these, but even worse, many people don’t pay any attention to the Terms and Conditions dialog boxes. So — someone wrote a game to show you how Terms and Conditions has, itself, evolved into a shell game.

https://termsandconditions.game/

Don’t be surprised if you get middling to low score.

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iPhone and COVID-19

by straitmacvp1 Comment on iPhone and COVID-19

Apple and Google collaborated in the spring of 2020 (long, long ago) to create a “passive” COVID-19 exposure system, which was released on May 20. It is “passive” in that, once it is turned on, you really don’t have to do anything for it to work. But – you do have to turn it on.

It also requires— because this is the United States and instead of one government, we have over 50 — that a given state set up the necessary infrastructure to handle the tracking. The tracking is entirely anonymous, and the only person who gets notified of your exposure is — you.

You can read more about Apple and Google’s work on this innovative system in Wikipedia’s article on Exposure Notification.

Requirements:

  • You need an iPhone
  • It needs to have a current version of iOS
  • You need to turn on Exposure Notifications (go to your iPhone Settings > Exposure Notifications)

Exposure Notification

There are just a few settings, essentially telling your phone to accept notifications, and to verify that you are in Washington State (or wherever you happen to be).

Settings under Exposure Notification

Virginia was the first state to support Exposure Notifications. Since then, Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, the District of Columbia — and Washington State — have added support.

How it works: your phone will use near-field communications (NFC), a very low-power radio signal, to take note of other phones that you come near. If at some future date the owner of one of those other phones reports a COVID-19 exposure, the Exposure Notification system will alert you. All of this is done anonymously, and voluntarily. Obviously, in order for the technology to work, literally millions of people need to turn on the notifications, and then also share that they’ve had a COVID-19 diagnosis, if they do get a positive test.

You can read about Washington’s program, called WA Notify, on the Washington State Department of Health website.

Addendum: WA Notify was announced on Monday, November 30. Within 24 hours, more Washington State residents had opted in to the notification system than any other state. By Friday, December 4, more than a million residents were using the system.

Ideally, notifications should be activated on at least 70% of all mobile phones in the state — Android and iPhone — for peak effectiveness. Ask your friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers, and others to participate. When it comes to the pandemic, the entire planet is in this together.