Interesting hack via OS-X Yosemite's Spotlight search

[thewayne]

Mac users are familiar with Spotlight. Most users might be familiar with web bugs, they're an invisible 1 pixel square graphic in an email that loads from a server that identifies you as a user and your ISP's IP address when you open an email (that's how you get email messages pleading 'Please don't go away!' from companies). In a nutshell, apparently there's a weakness that can be exploited to let someone search all of your Apple Mail emails remotely.

Solution? Two come to mind. First, go in to Preferences/Spotlight and turn off the ability for Spotlight to search your mail. Second, don't use Apple Mail. And it's always a good idea to have a firewall between you and the internet, but that's not an easy proposition to manage.

Google translation from the German site Heise.de:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fsecurity%2F

Comments

[silveradept]

These things will only get more common as we get more connected, I'm sure.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Hard to imagine things being more connected: I've got Dropbox syncing some files between my desktop and laptop and iCloud copying information between desktop, laptop, iPhone, and iPad. I don't use Apple Mail, largely because I use webmail for everything. I occasionally think about using Thunderbird or Apple Mail but haven't bothered with it yet.