The long and short of it is that my sister seems to have a stalker. This person has gathered a bunch of images of her and information about her (all stuff she has posted to the internet in some form/place or another and is relatively easy to find by googling her name). She has a good idea who it is, although at this point she has no proof, but now she’s PARANOID about this person doing more damage.
She doesn’t seem to “get” the difference between internet security and computer security- I think she thinks that if the picture/content came from her computer and is on the internet, that there’s some kind of link from it into her computer, and therefore this stalker can get inside her computer. She doesn’t have any kind of sharing set up, and has all of the basic security protections: firewall, administrative password, etc
She wants to run some kind of security sweep software that will remove spyware, keylogging programs, and all of the other stuff that a fearful person thinks must be inside their computer allowing stalkers in.
I’ve done some research, I see there are a few Norton and Allume products, but I don’t really know which is best suited for this type of situation.
I was looking for something like this about a year ago. I was surprised to find squat. But I thought I’d give your thread a bump and see if someone might know something.
I don’t think there is anything out there that is worth the trouble and expense. For whatever reasons, Macs don’t attract the attention of most crackers. Keeping your Mac updated with the latest bug fixes and security updates is sufficient for most people. Just make sure that “Software Update” is configured to run on a regular basis. See “System Preferences, System, Software Update”.
I think that the best thing you can do in this situation is not to spend time looking for security software that probably won’t even help. Rather, spend time explaining to your sister that getting access to stuff that she has placed on the internet is very different from getting access to her computer.
Well, there are generally two reasons. One is security through obscurity. If you want to cause damage, the sheer number of Windows boxes makes for a more attractive target. Second, OS X is indeed far more secure than any version of Windows (even though you can lock a Windows machine down pretty hard if you know what you’re doing.) That’s not to say that there aren’t exploits for OS X, but it’s harder to use them, especially if the user is not running as an admin. I’m the only user of my MacBook, but I still set up an admin account separate from my normal account and removed admin privileges from my day-to-day account. I know the passwords if needed, of course, and it’s not as annoying as it would be in Windows when it comes to amount of permissions needed.
One thing I would suggest for the OP’s sister would be to make sure to use File Vault. It can be a bit annoying at times when it comes to not releasing memory properly but the space can be recovered. I think I notice it more because of some of the odd things I do with my Mac and occasionally have to hard reset it, which I think is the main cause of space loss when it does happen.
There are keyloggers for OS X, but thanks to how OS X handles security, your sister would have had to explicitly give permission for one to be installed by entering the administrator account’s password in a pop-up window explaining that something’s about to be installed and that approval is needed.
I’m fairly confident that if she’s been feeling paranoid that she’d have noticed this and would not have granted permission.
I have since found out she was using Limewire, which if I understand correctly, is a file sharing program, and it seems to me that this would allow a major security breach, no?
She says she has removed it from her computer (hopefully she got all of the “parts”) but couldn’t this have been a big part of the problem?
If someone did something careless like share their “My Documents” folder, as opposed to just “My Music” or whatever, it’s entirely possible for the world to access their files.
As for getting rid of Limewire, applications are startlingly easy to uninstall on a Mac - just grab the application and drag it to the Trash. Unlike applications on a PC that install little bits of themselves from one end of the drive to the other, apps on a Mac are almost always entirely self-contained. What looks like a single file is actually a package containing however many individual files are needed, but they stick together, and it’s pretty rare for an app to leave any leftover bits of itself when it’s removed.
Is this true for the new unix-based Macs, though? I thought there were now “com.apple.____.plst” type files that are located in a couple different places that one has to search out…
OSX isn’t all that “new” any more (over six years old), and yes, most applications are still that self-contained. There are a few which insist on hiding bits and pieces in various places (some Microsoft apps, for instance), but they’re rare.
What she probably did was to give Limewire access to part or all of her home directories. If I’m right, that was an incredibly dumb thing to do. From there, anybody on the network could download practically anything in those directories. Fortunately, the access was almost completely one-way. They could get things off her drive, but couldn’t affect her computer. I really doubt that she’s got any remaining problems now that she has gotten rid of Limewire.
If she wants to run file-sharing, she should set up a directory dedicated to that and only put things in it that she wants to share i.e., no personal pictures, documents, etc. A good place is the Public directory which is put there for stuff that needs to be accessed by all users on the system. It’s almost tailor-made for this purpose. I’d also suggest something other than Limewire for file-sharing. I use Acquisition. He updates regularly and actively supports the program.