[PreMium]

-Start Rant

Today I downloaded the new WebOS Doctor 1.3.1. Right when the download was ready to finish I get a dialog box, (I think it was from Palm) saying that I had to agree to give this program FULL UNRESTRICTED ACCESS to my computer to use it!


Give them unrestricted access to my computer????

-Finish Rant

[anaglich]

PC or MAC?

[PreMium]

PC or MAC?

Mac

[anaglich]

Same here, and doesn't every third-party application ask for access to your computer?

[PreMium]

For some reason downloading from Palm's Website triggered some Java app that wanted to download the file and asked for "Full Unrestricted Access" to my computer. I found another download location and didn't have to give it that permission. Don't know what that was all about but didn't like the sound of it.

[emaddox84]

I don't know the details of the Mac OS, but most programs running on your computer have "Full Unrestricted Access" to your computer, unless you have some special code access permissions set up for particular programs. For instance, web apps (like a java applet if anyone remembers those) do not automatically have full access to your computer, and you have to grant more permission to said app if it needs to do things like write to your hard drive, etc. This is a security feature of your OS. This is why once you have a virus "installed" onto your computer it can do mostly whatever it wants, b/c to the OS it's just a program running on your computer, which would automatically have full access to your computer.

[hparsons]

For some reason downloading from Palm's Website triggered some Java app that wanted to download the file and asked for "Full Unrestricted Access" to my computer. I found another download location and didn't have to give it that permission. Don't know what that was all about but didn't like the sound of it.

WebOSDoctor is a Java file. The "some Java app" that it's triggering is Java (just like an MS Word file will trigger MS Word when you open it).

This has nothing to do with Palm; it's all about your OS and the way Java works on it.

[Mikey47]

Could this be their generic way of saying that it needs full admin rights to be able to run correctly?

[bonfilio]

The wording is a little misleading. On OSX, downloaded/browsed java apps will pop up a dialog asking essentially if they can use the computer (read/write files, browse the disk, etc). Otherwise the app is more or less sandboxed and can't do anything.

All it's doing is notifying you *beforehand* what every other program does as given. This is actually a good thing if it will ease your mind a bit.

Also, it's not full access unless it asks for your password, which it should (not as a .jar). It's not like you're being rooted or anything.

[alex.dobeck]

It's sort of like the UAC for windows, except the UAC is secure and horribly annoying while the Mac version is just horribly annoying.