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How can I protect my Mac?

J

jrv3034

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 23, 2002
802
0
Hello, all. I was surfing on another forum, and someone's signature showed a little graphic with my router's IP address, ISP, and browser programs (see below).

Should I be concerned? Am I vulnerable in some way? The OSX firewall is turned on, and I'm connected to a wireless router that's password protected. Is that not enough? Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
 

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Every single website you visit has access to all that information and more - that is how the internet works. The site you are visiting must know your IP address to know where to send the page; determining the ISP is a simple database check of the IP address. Your browser (user agent) is passed with every page view as well.
 
I would not worry about it.

I am an administrator on a fansite discussion community and we don't allow those images in peoples' signatures at all. Not because they are particularly dangerous, but because people panic about such private information being displayed to them on a public board.

Okay, so maybe an IP isn't the most dangerous thing to post but things like that are just unneeded.

Don't worry, I see those quite often and you should be perfectly fine.
 
jrv3034 said:
Hello, all. I was surfing on another forum, and someone's signature showed a little graphic with my router's IP address, ISP, and browser programs (see below).

Should I be concerned? Am I vulnerable in some way? The OSX firewall is turned on, and I'm connected to a wireless router that's password protected. Is that not enough? Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
Click to expand...


I am hoping Tiger gives us a better firewall / better control and monitoring of internet services, but even then - as discussed by others - all this info is available de to the way the TCP/IP works.
 
if you're that "anal" about it.

http://tor.eff.org/

It's an internet anonymizer that works with any program that supports proxies. In a nutshell, it allows you to request information over the internet without exposing your IP or location.

Advantages of using this could be:

* An SSL tunneling proxy. If your (college) ISP blocks certain sites (www.napster.com) or files (torrents), this program will bypass those protections.
* An anonymizer. You can visit your favorite bittorrent tracker, ed2k link site, knitting club site or goat pr0n site without leaving a trace.

I have it "installed" on my mac right now (airport and internal modem). Pretty easy, install, set a few numbers, test, walah. It'll show a different IP than my real one.

I doubt it'll be a feature in tiger. I'm sure the REAL cause for this is to track down people (ie. RIAA, kiddie pron, credit fraud, ect).
 
Don't concern yourself with those signatures. They're nothing but bits of code which tell you computer to put your info there - nobody can see the details of your IP address in that image but you. For everyone else, that image shows their IP address to them as well. Nothing to worry about.
 
Thanks, all. This makes me feel better. Can't be too careful, nowadays...

Oh, and I'm already working on the remote sentry cannons! ;)
 
as some said about only you can see that info.

All web site admins also can see that infomation but they see it every sigial time you access there page. It is infomation you computer is telling the site. It tells the web site you IP address so it knows where to send the data. You browser and OS because some sites run things diffently depending on you browser. An example of this is www.getfirefox.com. The link to download firefox is diffent depending on the OS. If you are on windows it says Free download for windows. if you are OSX change windows to OSX and the link is to that download. Same for linux.

People get way to peirnoded over that infomation. Getting some IP address is really a piece of cake if you run any type of website or that person ever dirctly connects to your computer. I could pull it from the log files (and more than likely along with the rest of the infomation.)
 
combatcolin said:
REMOTE SENTRY CANNONS

Borrow some from Ripley and Hicks, they'll protect your Mac some any nasty attacks.
Click to expand...

Game over MAN! Game Over!
 
Peyote said:
Game over MAN! Game Over!
Click to expand...

It's getting hot in this thread. But then again it is a *dry heat*. :D

If you use Safari, you can also activate the debug menu and spoof a fake agent, so that your browser / computer type are not revealed. But yeah, the level of danger surrounding this is not so high.
 
mkrishnan said:
Oooh, I hate it when we're playing references and everybody quits right when I get there. ;) It's another Aliens reference.
Click to expand...

LOL...I guess I haven't seen it in a while...what scene, and who said it?
 
Peyote said:
LOL...I guess I haven't seen it in a while...what scene, and who said it?
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Hudson. Same scene, I think, as the game over line. When they first enter the infested building on the alien world.

Frost: It's hot as (...) in here.
Hudson: Yeah man, but it's a dry heat!
 
mkrishnan said:
Hudson. Same scene, I think, as the game over line. When they first enter the infested building on the alien world.

Frost: It's hot as (...) in here.
Hudson: Yeah man, but it's a dry heat!
Click to expand...


I think I remember that now...good flick...Alien was scary but in a more still, quiet way. Not a lot goes on in that movie, but I enjoy it. Aliens was way more action packed, which I also enjoyed, just for a different reason. Alien 3 was cool for how well it was art directed, and the location was interesting, but that last one (Alien Resurrection) was horrible.

Anyway, enough about Alien movies
 
Is the the model Pulse Rifle that fires Ball bearings and emergancy flares from the granade attachment?

This was legandary when i was younger, but that wa pre internet and no one could afford one.

Even if i could buy one one HM Customs would never let me play with it. :(
 
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