On Feb 23, 2010, at 5:04 PM, Wallace Adrian D'Alessio wrote:
I looked at his thread. With the current story in the news who is to say he does not have a credible concern regarding computers he may fix and give to needy students? Why deride him for simply asking? Is that the spirit that LEM has fostered over the years? So far he has rather little discussion of webcam issues. And when he said something about the thread not leading to cogent information he was attacked and chastised for not putting his concern on a list where it belongs ( according to some. A LIST WITH NO READERS !
The thread did have cogent answers. They were provided clearly and early in the thread. The story in the news is about someone who has physical access to the computers, root level admin privileges and permission from higher ups to install the monitoring software. The only way to make sure that similar software is not on donated computers is to either nuke and pave the HD (write zeros to every sector and do a clean install) or to remove the old drive and install a new one. Both options were discussed in the early parts of the thread. The latter option is what led the thread to HD destruction.
It is not an exploit that can be installed remotely without explicit permission of an administrator level user, at least on Macs. Therefore, there is very little to worry about if you follow one of the two above options.
The chastisement was to take a discussion to the LEMlists list, which was specifically set up to discuss the policies and practices on the LEM lists. It is not an active list, but many of the LEM nannies and Dan do monitor it closely. That being said, as I posted before, we do allow civil discussion of list issues on the list.
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