Forum Moderators: travelin cat
A new feature of Mac OS X Tiger, Dashboard is a suite of simple programs called widgets that often access information on the internet... For the convenience of users, most widgets automatically install themselves. But experts fear any program that auto-installs is ripe for exploitation....Further, there is no immediate way to delete a widget that has been installed. According to Tiger's own Help file, "You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order."
[wired.com...]
On your Hard Drive click Library > Widgets > Then drag the widget you don't want to the Trash. Sounds pretty simple to me to remove.
I hope Apple will soon give the user more information control here before the Widgets run, such as popping up a message such as:
The Widget : "Dancing Widget" is requesting full access to your computer's ______. This may be a security risk. Allow/Deny/Delete.In the meantime, users should be as cautious running new Widgets as they (hopefully) are running new applications.
This seems to be yet another scare story based around misinformation together with speculation based on a theoretical hypothosis, which in this case is flawed.
Macs aren't immune to attacks, and we should all be vigilant, but scaremongering is nt helpful.
The Safari behavior of auto-installing Widgets needs to change, however. That's just brain-dead.
Thought to share...
I don't see why a widget should have any security issue just because its called a widget. If I changed the name to safehouse, would that help? Or made it bigger like to spread over the wole desktop, more visible?
Its an application that searches the web, possibly more. So your own firewall's and keychains, permissions etc.. are the protection you have anyway for all applications when conneted to the web, including your browser.
Take them out of the widget folder and chuck them in the bin if you don't like them. You can't remove them from the dashboard, like it says.
