Don't be evil: GoogleUpdater.exe

I just sniffed a bit my internet traffic, because one update application did not work. I did nothing except lauching the update application while using Packetyzer to monitor all network traffic.

I found some HTTP-Traffic between my computer and "74.125.43.113" (which is "clients.l.google.com") in my captures log. Yes, i tried Google Chrome on my Computer and i have Google Earth installed - the usual Google Apps. So Google installed a litte background process named "Google Updater". (Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the "Windows Task Manager", click on "Processes" and probably you'll find GoogleUpdater.exe.)

Here are parts from the logs:

Packetyzer Trace:

[...]
Internet Protocol, Src: XXX (192.168.2.XXX), Dst: clients.l.google.com (74.125.43.113)
[...]
Transmission Control Protocol, Src Port: 1628 (1628), Dst Port: http (80), Seq: 1, Ack: 1, Len: 437
[...]
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
GET /service/check2?appid=%7BXXXXXXX-XXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX%7D&appversion=1.2.133.33&applang=&machine=0&version=1.2.133.33&machineid=%7BXXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX%7D&userid=%7BXXXXXXX-XXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX%7D&osversion=5.1&servicepack=Service%20Pack%203 HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Google Update/1.2.133.33;winhttp\r\n
Host: cr-tools.clients.google.com\r\n
Connection: Keep-Alive\r\n
Cache-Control: no-cache\r\n
Pragma: no-cache\r\n
\r\n
Request: True


And this is the informationen, google updater tranferes to google (probably every hour or so):

• Installed Application (Which app is installed, which version). This is all google needs to know, if you app needs an update!!!
  
• Machine-ID - google recognized your computer
• User-ID - google regognized the user in front of the computer (i guess "which user is logged in?")
• OS informationen - i have installed Windows XP ("osversion=5.1") with SP3 ("servicepack=...")

Google can track when my computer is online! Google even recognizes me.

Now "google" ;-) a bit for GoogleUpdater.exe and i learned: Googleupdater is inserted in a AutoStart-Liste from windows as well as in the taskplaner. So it's not really easy to get rid of google update, you'll have to find a proper tutorial and remove the software from multiple places.... like a virus...

Google is a great company ... but they have somthing around them, that frightens me....

P.S.: yes, i know - blogger.com belongs to google...

Filesystems for any OS... (2)

ext2 for mac is last updated in 2006. well, don't know if i want to use this in Leopard (from 2007).

Now I start thinking about NAS Storage with NFS and CIFS. But NAS is quite expensive :-(

Filesystems for any OS...

I'm just thinking about filesystems on my next USB-Backup Disk.

Status

Currently i have backup disks formatted with FAT32 (for use with all OS), AFS (for OS X-Time Machine) and ext3 (for linux backups). My main backup disks formatted with FAT, because at this time "Mac OS X" did not support anything other.
I currently plan to by new disks, so it's time to think about this filesytem-mix (or filesystem-mess).

needed Features

Here are my features, i'm dreaming of:

• journalling: my backup disk should be able to hold my data, even if the OS crashes the disk losses power.
  
• filesize: it would be nice to be able to store at least 4.7GB ISO-DVD-Images (i sometime master the images on one PC, but burn on a differen one) and to store my full-length DVB-?-Movies (captured from TV) on the disk without splitting.
  
• hardlinks: Do you know Apple's time machine? then you know why hardlinks are something fantastic. you can copy wih "rsync --links-desk=..." and have something like a versioned backup for your data. The best: you do incremental backups, but can delete old backups as if they are full backups.
  

i do need the backup with several Operating systems. If my Macbook is sunk in the toilette, i'd like to access my data via linux or windows. (Which is quite difficult, i i have only the time machine backup - who can read AFS with this apple partitioning??)

Possibilities

a bigger and maybe for you better ist is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

FAT32

• OS-Support: excellent
• biggest filesize: 4GB (bad)
• journalling: no, but many tools can repair FAT.
• hardlinks: no

NTFS

• OS-Support: not sufficient:
  
  • win: excellent,
    
  • linux: good (ntfs-3g: read/write),
    
  • mac: native: read-only, ntfs-3g should works
    
• biggest filesize: 16TBGB (but not shure, if anyone but win can read >4GB-Files)
• journalling: yes (at least with win, not shure what ntfs-3g does here)
• hardlinks: yes

ext3

• OS-Support: good
  
  • win: http://www.fs-driver.org/ -> without journalling
  • linux: native
  • mac: not shure yet (wikipedia say's: "possible with ext2fsx" -> without journalling)
    

• biggest filesize: 16GB (enough)
  
• journalling: yes (not windows)
• hardlinks: yes

Looking at the above mentioned list at wikipedia, i guess these are all i can choose.

Results

I don't like to use NTFS, because it is not open sources and with each new windows version, i'm not shure if features are added that break my linux/mac (write) support. The restore possibillities are either cost money or come from Microsoft. The tools from MS are okay, i guess, but i the need windows to repair. This is dangerous in an emergency! (Just try to find a Windows-Live-CD...)

FAT32 is ancient, though it lack eatures of modern files systems. I will use this filessystem on "transfer usb disks" because anyone can read/write this without problems.

ext2/3 i'm not shure about this. the Mac ext2fsx project has a beta from 11/2006, Leopard appeared 10/2007. The filesystem itself has all features i need. Read/write support for windows and Linux is good, but Mac.... .

Anyone knows a better alternative?

Links

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

The Blogosphere seems to prefere "ext2/3"

• http://www.tuaw.com/2005/03/01/sharing-a-file-system-among-linux-mac-os-and-windows/ -> ext2
  
• http://opensource.weblogsinc.com/2005/03/01/sharing-a-file-system-among-linux-mac-os-and-windows/ -> ext2
• http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/850546.html

Windows Dienste verwalten

Auf ApfelTalk - eine Apple und MacOS-Seite mit Forum, News, und so kram - hat "movidre" einen Guide veröffentlicht, der MacOS-Usern einige Systemeinstellungen von MS Windows XP+Vista näherbringt - Mac-User "müssen" sich dank BootCamp auch vermehrt in Windows auskennen ;-) ..


http://www.apfeltalk.de/forum/sicherheit-windows-xp-t114821.html

Ich finde diesen Bericht auch für langjährige Windows-Benutzer sehr empfehlenswert. Hauptthemen sind Virenschutz (unter MacOS ist dies weitgehen unnötig), Security (Firewall und Systemdienste) sowie eine kurze Einführung in Opensource-Software unter Windows.

Insbesondere einen Verweis auf das Microsoft EBook Bedrohungen und Gegenmaßnahmen auf das Kapitel 7: Systemdienste, welches viele Standard-Windows-Systemdienste beschreibt. So eine Zusammenfassung habe früher mal lange gesucht.