Rumbling with Gatekeeper — Mac Geek Gab 870

· John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · Mac Geek Gab Podcast

Apple’s protective engines usually do well at protecting our devices, but what happens when they go haywire? It’s time to Rumble, that’s what, and John and Dave are here to help! Listen as they answer your questions, share Cool Stuff Found, push out the Quick Tips and make it easy to learn at least five new things this week!

Switchmate 2.0 Smart Switch for Toggle Style Light Switches: $19.99

· Bryan Chaffin · TMO Deals

Switchmate 2.0

We have a deal on Switchmate 2.0, a smart switch that snaps over your existing light switches and controls them by doing the flipping for you. That means you don’t have to rewire the switch or replace your existing lightbulbs. Using the companion app, the Switchmate 2.0 can respond to voice commands, turn lights on automatically when you arrive home, and it has multiple timers for total smart lighting control. This device is $19.99 through our deal.

Court Finds NSA Collects Innocent Americans’ Data Anyway

· Andrew Orr · Link

Person holding a sign that says “NSA is watching you.”

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) found that the NSA doesn’t follow the law and collections the data of innocent Americans. This is according to a recently declassified document [PDF] from November 2020.

From where we sit, it seems clear that the FISC continues to suffer from a massive case of national security constitutional-itis. That is the affliction (not really, we made it up) where ordinarily careful judges sworn to defend the Constitution effectively ignore the flagrant Fourth Amendment violations that occur when the NSA, FBI, (and to a lesser extent, the CIA, and NCTC) misuse the justification of national security to spy on Americans en mass.

Over 29,000 Databases Expose 19 Petabytes of Data

· Andrew Orr · Link

29,000 unsecure databases

Many companies aren’t properly securing their databases, like the one I wrote about this morning. But we have some numbers. CyberNews quotes “29,000 unprotected databases worldwide exposing 19 petabytes (19,000 terabytes, 19,000,000 gigabytes, etc) of data.

To conduct this investigation, we used a specialized search engine to scan for open databases of three of the most popular database types: Hadoop, MongoDB, and Elasticsearch. While performing the search, we made sure that the open databases we found required no authentication whatsoever and were open for anyone to access, as opposed to those that had default credentials enabled.

Apple Card Family Features, Restrictions Revealed in Support Document

· Charlotte Henry · Link

Apple Card family

Apple has released a support document outlining the features of the recently launched Apple Card Family. AppleInsider published a breakdown of what it says.

Detailed in a support document, Apple Card Family is available to one cardholder and one member of their Family Sharing group who is 18 or older. Touted as a rethinking of traditional credit cards, the new service enables both members of an account to share a credit line while simultaneously building credit. A total of six people, including owners or co-owners, can be assigned to a particular Apple Card account. Participants must be 13 or older. Co-owners share full responsibility for account balance and payments, and have their credit reported equally in their own name, Apple says.

'Ghostwriter' Season Two on Apple TV+

· Charlotte Henry · Cool Stuff Found

The full second season of the children’s show Ghostwriter is now available on Apple TV+.  Apple also released a new video going over the clues that have been left behind in season one.