Re: What about all of the data the OS stores about us?

In article <270420071221355484%geefive@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
geefive <geefive@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

and who gets it

Nobody. It's there so you don't have to wait as long next time you ask
to see something you looked at yesterday as you did when you looked at
it yesterday. It's there so you don't have to retype tedious information
every time you go to a certain form, increasing your odds of data entry
error.

Isn't that what bookmarks are for?

Bookmarks are similar to the URL cache but neither really replaces the
other completely.

You can let them age off or select the menu command to purge the URL
cache completely/immediately.

I see _Safari > Reset Safari_ and _Safari > Empty Cache_, but I don't
see an option to clear that URL cache. Please point me to that.

The last command in the History menu.

There are items called plists, and there are scripts that reference
these. These are not used for anything in particular that I can see,

Depending on the specific plists and "scripts" you're talking about,
I'd
be surprised if there are any that aren't primarily there to help you
in
some way.

That's what I'm trying to find out. I'm quite capable of using Safari
without any additional help from cache and data files.

Cache, I'll agree. It'll just be slower, and if you don't want the cache
files there you can get rid of them from within Safari any time you
like. Data files are a different matter, largely because _everything's_
a data file. Safari doesn't really keep a whole lot around aside from
cached pages (which you can purge), auto-entry data (which you can purge
and disable from accumulating) and settings (which you can change and
time you like or even revert to factory defaults through a menu command).

Okay, maybe _data files_ was a poor choice of words. And I'm not
thinking entirely of Safari, but the many megs of data stored across
the OS and applications that are stored in cache or log files. Could
all of this simply be for my own convenience?

For your own ... convenience isn't necessarily the word I'd use. They're
there to provide benefit to _you_. In some cases the circumstances under
which that benefit will manifest are rare, but those are some of the
most important cases to have those logs.

If these files are for my convenience only,
wouldn't Apple give me a way to turn them off for my own peace of mind
if only because people who use Macs are so security sensitive?

Bluntly, you're not "security sensitive." The level of concern you're
expressing at least borders paranoiac. You're conceiving of ways that
information could be used and assuming that it _is_ being used that way
when there's no evidence supporting that notion and evidence against the
notion is easily gathered.

Since
they are persistent and pervasive, it's not a stretch to assume that
they have another purpose, a purpose they aren't too up front about.

Yes. Actually it is.

If this sounds paranoid to you, then you have to consider that many
people switched to the Mac platform out of security concerns about the
evil empire.

The Soviet Union?

People who switched to the Mac out of security concerns generally did so
because their experience of Windows was that their machines were too
easily compromised by outside agencies without their consent or
foreknowledge. While data gathering by Microsoft was an annoyance, I
don't think I've heard of a significant number of people who switched
platforms because of it.

You'd think that Apple would simply tell us about the
log/cache files and exactly what they are used for. I'm looking for
something definitive.

Most people don't care what they're used for, IMO. Those who do can find
out. I've told you what they're used for collectively. If you want to
know more specifically, you're going to have to be more specific about
which ones you're asking about. Although once you get more specific, the
intentions are often fairly obvious.


We do if we keep an eye on what's going (or trying to go) through the
communication interfaces in our machines, and enough of "us" do that
when some vendor tries to gather information silently we hear about it
fairly quickly. You've guessed wrong, in this case.

That's not very reassuring. Let me give you an example of one
potential problem. If I open an mpeg file while I'm connected to the
web and there's a problem, then a connection is made to an Apple
website that tells me there's a later version of the software
available.

You're leaving something out of that description. What you've described
does not inherently occur. Open an MPEG file with what? What nature of
problem results in connections?

How does it know that if some information is not shared
with the website?

How does a piece of software report to you that it's out of date? It
asks the server what the current version is and then the software
running locally compares that to its own version and tells you if
there's a mismatch. It doesn't require any information to be transmitted
out of your machine except the normal stuff that comprises correctly
formed TCP packets. The only information "shared" with the website is
the implication that you have the software for which you're downloading
an update. (Note: downloading. Simply checking for an update may not
carry that implication if the vendor has more than one app.)

How many other programs do this, and what files does
the other server access on my HD to make what determinations about the
file I'm opening, what version of the software I'm using, and any other
data from cache and log files like registration, etc.?

In general, they don't. On the rare occasions when someone does find a
program Mac program that silently transmits information off-site there's
invariably a big stink made about it.

Another instance would be Apple's software update. Boy, do they root
around on your HD or not?

They don't. They follow a model similar to what I described above. The
major difference is that it's not the individual local apps checking for
updates, but a task-oriented local app. That local app "roots around" in
exactly one directory on your machine, which is there precisely to help
SU and the Apple Installer tool provide you with a decent user
experience. (Sound familiar?)

You know, they say "don't believe half of
what you see, and none of what you hear," so what do I believe about
stuff that's going on that I don't see _or_ hear?

I don't know. But that philosophy raises the question of what
reassurance you could possibly hope to find by asking broad questions in
an open forum. The only way you such a belief can be counteracted is for
you to create your own packet sniffer (because you can't really trust
the ones already available; they may be colluding with the OS vendor)
and examine the traffic during the rare occasions when you allow your
machine to be physically connected to a network.

You'll probably also want to keep an eye on the output of lsof (tells
you what files are open and by what processes) and track the times files
are opened against your other activity.

G
.

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