Any Mac tech experts on here?

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i have a simple question that i need a verifiable answer to.

i've been working away from home on a sisters house doing renovations. i stay there as it's a five hour commute each way and use her computer at night, a mac running a system OSX. not being at all familiar with mac's i start getting interested and checking things out. it's long story but i came to find out by going into sys preferences or something there was a place where her significant other had saved my email password and had another command set to save all of my passwords. while i was home on the weekend he also set up a seperate user acct for me without a user password.

when i confronted her about this she asked him; he told her he needed my email acct password to to manage the computer (she's puter illiterate). i made a few calls and found out he was full of it, told her, he stands by the ruse, she believes him, i quit and world war three is now in full swing. so what's the real story?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 2,054 • Replies: 22

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listening...

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well....does he need my email acct password or not?

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I'm not Mac expert by any means but his story just sounds bogus. Mac's OS-X is built on a UNIX kernel. I don't know of any OS on any system that doesn't allow the adminstrator full access to anything on the machine. The administrator doesn't need your paswords to manage the system. The only time they might need it is if they were verifying that you did have access to something they had setup for you bu tthat should only be a one time thing. There'd be no reason to save your passwords on the machine that I can think of.

(btw mikey, since this is a computer related question I'm going to move this over to the "Computers" forum where it's likely to get seen by someone that may be able to answer more specifically)

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No he doesn't.

If any of the passwords he has are important to you then you may want to change them ASAP.

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(This is not specific to Macs, as I'm not a Mac tech.) Using a program to determine or recover your passwords may have been a lazy way to make sure he had the info needed to set things back up correctly in case something went wrong (e.g. after upgrading your email program or things of that nature). Logging your passwords without telling you in advance, however, is at best sneaky.

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Ah, I hadn't seen that fishin' more or less already noted the same thing.

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thank you all.

i've gotten the same answer from dozens of people that i know that are "high on mac's". i consider it an invasion of my privacy for starters never mind him lying about it to her which makes me very, very, very mad.

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sneaky at the very least monger,,,

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I am mightily confused on why he would need a visitor's passwords. (I presume your sister has her own email set up already - why would he set up one for you?) Don't you just use the browser and check your own email provider? You can click on whether you want the machine to remember it. I have no idea if that overrides his tinkering.

I use friends' computers when I stay with them, bless their hearts, and would be dumbfounded to find out they had searched for my passwords. I said I was listening because I'd be creeped out, but am not sure I am right.

I think Sattfocusable knows a lot about Macs..

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i changed all my acct passwords from another puter and haven't been near it since adrian,,,thanks for responding.

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By the way, the fact that your passwords were being logged is what I said was sneaky (incredibly sneaky, in fact). Merely determining them on a one time basis for the sake of administration of the sort fishin' & I mentioned, while not best practice, could have just been a way to save time.

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monger, i was told all he needed was the administrator user acct password and not the email acct password to get in to fix any trouble or breakdowns.

the point is he lied and said he needed my email acct password.....true or false? big difference between user acct passwords and email acct passwords i think.

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I said nothing otherwise, Mikey -- I was mentioning general concepts. (Keep in mind that I and a number of others like to note generalized computer-related principals so that people who read along will get information that is less individualized to only one person).

To go along with what I'm saying, when I am working on repairing, backing up or transferring someone's email program (such as Outlook or Outlook Express) and the person is not readily available to type in their password should it be needed, I will sometimes use a program to note their email account passwords before I get to work (it takes less than a second).

However, I've agreed from the beginning that your story as you've described it thus far definitely sounds suspicious.

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Listening as well.

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thanks fishin for moving it, and monger and everyone else for your input.

i'm still trying to figure this all out but i think i assumed right from the start. and as you pointed "sneaky at best"....

i'm still listening as well...