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ShadowOfGed
Travels via TARDIS
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Earthsea
 
2006-07-08, 00:47

Actually, I've heard that 10.4.7 is doing a little more than just checking for updates, but not something bad or nefarious.

What I heard is that it's essentially check-summing your widgets, and then wandering out on the 'net to Apple's servers where it verifies that (a) your widgets are up to date and (b) that your widget's checksum matches the one stored on Apple's server. If that's the case, it should (in theory) make it extraordinarily difficult to create a rogue widget for Dashboard that masquerades as one of Apple's own. And even if you modified one of Apple's widgets directly, that alteration would show up as a checksum mismatch, and then Dashboard could notify the user or take some other appropriate action.

Considering *many* Windows viruses and spyware survive by masquerading as (or looking similar to) system processes and services, I think it is a Good Thing™ that Apple is taking steps to prevent malware from hiding behind an Apple-branded widget. So if this really is the case, then I don't mind.



As a disclaimer, I haven't verified this on my own, but I did hear it from people who should have a dang good idea of what's going on.

Also, keep in mind that Apple has a huge amount of brand trust right now, unlike other companies such as Microsoft. My bet is that even if some users consider this information "sensitive" (come on, it's a *widget* not personal information), Apple is not storing it, and the end result is for the user's good. Apple's brand would be marred if they did anything nefarious on the back end, and I doubt they're willing to sacrifice that for whatever benefits they'd get.



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Oh, and I personally think the Digg and Slashdot crowds are overly paranoid. Sometimes they raise valid points, but a lot of the time I feel like someone submits a story that will evoke communal paranoia just to get themselves posted. I used to read Slashdot, but the content in general (and comments in particular) seem to have degraded, so I don't really pay attention anymore. I don't think Apple's doing anything wrong here, but there are plenty of tinfoil-hat fanatics that differ with me.


Apparently I call the cops when I see people litter.
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