ACK! Adware/Spyware!!

About a year ago - after owning my MAC for over a year - just for fun, I decided to run an adware/spyware/tracking cookie scan on my iBook. And to my pleasure, nothing came up.

But, for the last couple of days, I've been automatically, and seemingly randomly redirected to a site trying to sell me ErrorSafe software. PC users are probably more than familiar with this uber nuisance, but I had been blissfully oblivious... until now. This kind of thing used to happen all the time on my PC, but I'd *never* experienced anything like this on my MAC. I decided to use (the free demo of) MacScan once again, only this time, it found 32 instances of spyware. From 0-32 in a year!

To be fair, I do recall receiving an ErrorSafe pop-up that asked if I wanted to download the software. I didn't click "No" (thinking that was most certainly a trick), but instead hit the "x" to close the window altogether. This is, apparently, how it gets you. I may as well have just clicked "Yes".

If you see this ErrorSafe pop-up/window, immediately hit cmd+Q to close your browser; it's the only way to prevent this thing from getting on your system.

I have read that this annoying ad is just that for MAC users; an annoying ad, and does not pose any sort of threat to my system, but still; finding 32 tracking cookies was not what I had expected.

Fortunately, MacScan seemed to do the trick. I have since gone into my Firefox privacy settings and I am now only accepting session cookies from trusted sites. Phew!

Reset OSX Admin Password without the Tiger CD

My husband gave my dad his old G4 desktop a few months ago. When we went to change the administrator password, something happened (perhaps the consequences of one person manning the keyboard and the other manning the mouse?...) and, for whatever reason, the password was accidentally reset to something-ruther, with no way to find out what it was. After reading several articles, we thought the only way to reset the admin password was to reinstall Tiger via the bootable CD... only the Tiger CD was in NY, and we were in Toronto.

We thought we were screwed until we discovered a set of commands that esentially allows you to reinstall Tiger without the CD (thus allowing you to recreate the administrator account). This info can come in handy if, say for instance, you purchase a used MAC and the seller disappears before giving you the admin password.

Some don't think this info should be public, but let's face it -- if someone gets a hold of your computer, unless your files are encrypted, your info/privacy is compromised.

From what I've read (I don't know this for sure), this method should work with 10.3.9 and 10.4 versions of Tiger. My dad's running 10.4.9 and it worked beautifully. Good luck!:

1. Make sure your MAC is off.

2. Turn on your MAC...

2A. When you hear the “chime", press and hold the Apple/command key and the letter 's', until you see a (scary!) black and white screen. (You are now in "Single User Mode".)

3. Type the following and be sure to include the spaces, as indicated:

/sbin/mount -uw /

PRESS ENTER/RETURN

rm /var/db/.applesetupdone

PRESS ENTER/RETURN

reboot

PRESS ENTER/RETURN

Your MAC will restart (this could take several minutes) and take you to the Tiger installation wizard (where you will be prompted to create a new administrator account and password).