Re: Help! from jms

In article <495676e4$0$1590$742ec2ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Patty Winter <patty1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <Tuu5l.15609$ZP4.4620@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Dupa T. Parrot <dupa_t_parrot@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This is a good time to remind Windows and Mac users not to do their
day-to-day work with administrator rights. Having administrator rights
makes it easy for malware to self-install.

Does it?

It does.

Every time I install a program under Mac OS X, it asks
for my administrator password. It isn't automatic.

The Apple installer app behaves itself by asking for whatever
authentication the package author specified when they created it but as
long as the running user is an admin most installers don't strictly need
to go through that.

(Wondering how many Windows and Mac users don't realize that their
computers have user accounts.)

Well, Macs have used a UNIX-based (now an official UNIX release)
operating system for years, so sure, there's been the capability
for multiple users, admin, and root accounts all this time. (I've
only logged on as root a couple of times. *That* makes me nervous!)
Actually, I think Apple had some kind of multiuser capability even
before that, although I never used it.

They did, although it was very rudimentary. But the fact that Macs have
been UNIX(-ey) for nearly a decade now doesn't dilute the seriousness of
the prior poster's question. Since the default behavior in a fresh OS X
install is to create a single admin user and then set the machine to
automatically log in to that account, I think it's fair to believe that
a substantial percentage of users might not notice that there are
distinct accounts available.

--
"Harry?" Ron's voice was a mere whisper. "Do you smell something ... burning?"
- Harry Potter and the Odor of the Phoenix

.

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