I dropped the $3.99 on the iOS app only to find that the Mac app wasn't compatible with my computer.
Looks cool, but I was pretty disappointed that I paid money and it didn't work with no warning.
Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
41–50 of 169 posts
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#42This seems insecure. If I leave my phone by my computer, or if my bag gets stolen with my phone and computer in it, I'm in trouble. That said, it's pretty cool, and I like the website design.
I do see your point, but wouldn't dropping your car keys also allow someone to steal your car?
But having a car stolen is way less of a problem than all your personal data being stolen. If my car is stolen because someone stole my bag with the keys in it then all I lose is my insured car.
If my laptop is stolen with the 'keys' to the laptop also in the bag, my life could become very difficult very quickly taking me years to recover from.
I think the point is you don't want to have the same paradigm as car + keys when it comes to your private information.
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#43This seems like magic. What method does it use to unlock your Mac with no password?
It doesn't actually unlock your machine. If you lock your computer it will not work. What it does is put up a page that looks nearly identical to the login page with small changes. It's a cool app (I tried it) but I'm disappointed that I can't find a way to toggle the lock via Alfred/Keyboard shortcut. I can get in the habit of hitting a key combination/alfred command when I get up but having to click the icon in the…
activating screensaver via alfred will do it, as will a hot corner set to start screensaver.
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#44This seems like magic. What method does it use to unlock your Mac with no password?
That's the real question. If you've auto-login turned on, then your password is stored in a very insecure way. Anyone could remove the drive and get access: http://encase-forensic-blog.guidancesoftware.com/2013/07/exa...
If you turn on drive encryption and then add a "bios" password in the firmware to prevent recovery, that's about as protected as things get on Mac.
Which means until your hard drive is decrypted it's still protected and this app won't work.
In my case, this app won't work even when the computer goes to sleep. Why? I've set mine to re-encrypt on sleep, so it prompts me for the password -- to unencrypt -- every time.
I'm not adding this until Apple can use this as a second factor for the encryption -- or as a way to select a profile and load user data from the phone.
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#45That video is so fucking pretentious I could puke into my mouth out of disgust.
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#46More apps and devices seem to be using wireless proximity as some kind of authenticator, along with the assumption that a specific received signal strength confirms the user's intent to perform some action. However, such systems seem to be quite prone to a simple attack consisting of a battery-powered bidirectional amplifier connected a pair of highly directional antennas. Simply point one antenna toward the user's phone and the other antenna toward the user's computer, and you can fool the computer into thinking the user's phone is closer than it really is.
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#47If iphone is a part of your product it might be a good idea to make your website work well on mobile safari on iphone.
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Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#48I dropped the $3.99 on the iOS app only to find that the Mac app wasn't compatible with my computer. Looks cool, but I was pretty disappointed that I paid money and it didn't work with no warning.
You can get your money refunded by contacting Apple. http://www.labnol.org/software/itunes-app-store-refunds/
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
They won't need the guest account with this product.
You use the guest account as a honeypot so they open the Mac and use it for long enough (without wiping it) for you to get a wifi connection and can get the location with Prey :-)
Sure, that's a best-case scenario. How about no WiFi in the vicinity and a couple of accidental knocks on the phone?
Re: Tap your iPhone to unlock your Mac
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't actually unlock your machine. If you lock your computer it will not work. What it does is put up a page that looks nearly identical to the login page with small changes. It's a cool app (I tried it) but I'm disappointed that I can't find a way to toggle the lock via Alfred/Keyboard shortcut. I can get in the habit of hitting a key combination/alfred command when I get up but having to click the icon in the…
Now that's a massive dealbreaker. That should be made more obvious.
Indeed. I'm thinking this is less and less secure with every word I hear about it. Here I was imagining it used overlay effects from a system process and some kind of Kerberos certificates or other mechanism to convince the computer to login for real. A fake password screen... sigh. Sounds like the next virus.