Category: tech

tech

PicPlz Sold Out: Why, Again, Are We Letting Fickle Startups Own our Content and Relationships?

I missed this last week: PicPlz is barely live as a service, and it’s already been spun off in a cash deal so its makers can be done with it.

These little mobile apps combine convenience with effortless social interaction, but the final loyalty isn’t to the user. I’m hoping that the social sharing experience for stuff like this becomes less dependent on proprietary services that try to own the social interaction. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to find more effective ways of recreating these rich experiences on platforms that let me own and control my content.

tech

Macs get viruses. And the trojans are getting more deceptive.

For years, virus makers have been tricking people into installing trojans under the disguise of a program intended to actually remove trojans that weren’t there. They usually did so by disguising themselves as part of Windows XP – which was an obvious fake for anyone using any other operating system.

But today my boss ran into this and asked me to take a look:

Imitation OS X UI attempting trojan installation
(click image for full-size version)

Look at that imitation of the OS X Finder. Not perfect, but it’s pretty dang good! I wouldn’t expect everyone to be able to tell that it’s fake.

News of legitimate Mac trojans recently cropped up again, but it looks like they’ve gotten even more sophisticated with some pretty convincing fake Finder interfaces. People used to assume that Macs aren’t targeted for viruses for their lower market share, but it looks like that’s an even more unsafe assumption now. If you use a Mac, you aren’t exempt from being safe with your computer: don’t give it your Administrator password when you aren’t trying to install or update software. Any other time, it’s a trap!