Filed under: Portables, Software
MacPhoneHome
Scott's post from yesterday
got me thinking about security issues with my Powerbook. For the
most part, I ascribe to the "never leave your Powerbook unmanned /
unsupervised" philosophy of notebook security, which quite honestly is
one of the best ways to ensure against theft. However, there are more security options beyond NSA recommendations and
/or tethering your Powerbook to your chest via some chains and some rather
odd piercing choices. No, MacPhoneHome is not an E.T.-themed game for the Mac, but rather an added bit of security. If your computer is Mac-jacked and the thief neglects to wipe everything clean before booting the computer, MacPhoneHome sends a clandestine email when the computer is connected to the internet via which the computer can be tracked. The software runs $29.95USD and is freshly updated for Tiger compatibility. If you buy the software, remember to keep the emergency contact information for the company in some location other than your computer.
Very useful for stupid thieves. Smart thieves will most likely format the drive and do a full reinstall before hooking up to the internet.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
daggerquill said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
It looks promising, but not terrbly useful at the moment. The install guide has a screencap of the setup window, and there are no fileds to specify username, password, alternate ports, or SSL/TLS security for the smtp connection. Since more and more ISPs are restricting access on port 25 as an anit-spam measure, it's unlikely that entering your smtp server will do much good if your computer is stolen. You'd need to geuss, ahead of time, the smtp server on the network where the theif is going to plug in. They need to put in some basic smtpauth fuctionality before they can expect anyone to buy it. Then $29.95 for MacPhoneHome combined with a year's subscription to a service like Mailhop Outbound from dyndns.org (if your company doesn't provide smtp on a random port) will be money well spent. Until then, it's really money down the drain, at least if the perp uses any national ISP.
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Steve Mitchell said 4:18PM on 6-16-2005
I have tried the new Version (3.0) of MacPhoneHome and it works great. daggerquill's assessment is, frankly dead wrong. That's the beauty of the software: version 3.0 is must easier to use than the previous Version 2.x because you don't have to put in SMTP information anymore. The software somehow finds a way to bypass both the email relaying and authentication issues.
It's really a very slick piece of coding and, for $29.95 one-time fee, is a real value. I recommend it to all Mac users!
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