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hoakley September 12, 2019 Macs, Technology, Updates

How Scrub 1.0 can help protect your privacy

Our Macs store a lot of information which we can’t see readily. Much of the time this is very useful. If you can’t remember where you downloaded a file from, it should be shown in the More Info section of the Finder’s Get Info dialog. When you discover that the latest version of a document you’ve been working on is missing a couple of paragraphs, you can Browse All Versions and find an earlier version in which they still appear.

Sometimes, though, all this metadata and extended information can trip us up. I’ve shown how this can undo attempts to redact a PDF document, for example, and anyone working with private or sensitive documents or data needs to be very careful that they don’t leak through these friendly features. Despite the advances in privacy brought in macOS Mojave and Catalina, macOS still doesn’t offer any simple feature to clean documents or a thumb drive of potentially damaging content like this.

Over a year ago, I developed a free utility Scrub, which is designed to strip out a lot of hidden data which could prove damaging if examined by third parties. These include:

  • extended attributes (xattrs), which often contain download source and time and much more,
  • Spotlight metadata, which opens the contents of documents to search,
  • versions, which may contain material which was later removed or redacted from a document,
  • the QuickLook cache, which in High Sierra and earlier could readily show previews of images and other files you have used,
  • system logs, which can contain entries revealing your Mac’s activities in the previous 20 days or more,
  • datestamps on files, which reveal when a document was created and last modified.

scrub13

Removing those is a serious and committing action. By definition, you can’t have an Undo, and used inappropriately, Scrub can cause damage and lose data. To help you avoid that, it works in two phases: you first perform an audit of the volume/folder/document you want to scrub clean, and that lets you know of any particular dangers in doing so. When you’re happy that what you’re intending to do won’t cause damage, you can then run the scrub to clean those files.

This is ideal, for example, when you need to clean a ‘thumb’ drive containing sensitive documents. Used without great care on your Home folder, it will cause severe damage which you may find very difficult to reverse.

This first full release of Scrub:

  • checks its code integrity when it’s first opened;
  • is compatible with El Capitan to Catalina, although not all features are available on every supported version;
  • has a detailed Help book, supplied as a separate PDF as well;
  • has several cosmetic improvements, such as resizeable text and better saving of window sizes and positions.

It has been hardened and notarized for compatibility with Mojave and Catalina.

Scrub version 1.0 is now available from here: scrub1
from Downloads above, and from its Product Page.

Please use it wisely.

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Posted in Macs, Technology, Updates and tagged metadata, privacy, QuickLook, Scrub, security, Spotlight, version, xattr. Bookmark the permalink.

7Comments

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  1. 1
    EcleX on September 12, 2019 at 10:24 am

    Thanks for this –yet another– awesome application! They could be even more useful if supported drag & drop.

    Additionally, in the case of Scrub, it would be great if showed the information to be deleted.

    BTW, sometimes the “File – Get Info” of Mac Finder does not show from where a file was downloaded. Is there a way to know such information in such cases?

    Thanks again for all your fantastic jewels!

    LikeLiked by 1 person

    • 2
      hoakley on September 12, 2019 at 11:38 am

      Thank you.
      AFAIK and have tested (and just checked), Scrub does support drag and drop.
      Unfortunately, it can’t show the information to be deleted: use it on a volume or folder, and that will be overwhelming, and impose a high performance penalty. The purpose of the audit is to summarise the data to be removed, and highlight potential problems it could raise. Even that can get quite overwhelming at times.
      The download URL for items is stored in an extended attribute. Some downloading apps don’t write that, and it’s often stripped when moving or copying an item around.
      Howard.

      LikeLike

  2. 3
    EcleX on September 12, 2019 at 4:58 pm

    Thanks. I have tried again, yet Scrub 1.0 does nothing when I try to drag and drop a file over it, in macOS 10.12.6 (16G2128) Sierra.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

    • 4
      hoakley on September 12, 2019 at 7:02 pm

      I’m sorry about that: I’ve just checked it again in 10.14, and it works fine, so it’s obviously macOS-specific. I’ll try to discover what the problem is, but will be flying blind, as I can’t even download a Sierra installer to set up a VM for testing.
      Howard.

      LikeLike

      • 5
        EcleX on September 13, 2019 at 7:52 am

        In my case, searching Google for
        How to download macOS Sierra
        finds hits like
        How can I download the installer for macOS Sierra 10.12?
        https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/300911/how-can-i-download-the-installer-for-macos-sierra-10-12

        There is shows several options, including a direct link to App Store that shows it:
        The link to the installer on the Mac App Store is: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-sierra/id1127487414?ls=1&mt=12

        LikeLiked by 1 person

      • 6
        hoakley on September 13, 2019 at 7:59 am

        Ah. That works fine if the Mac you’re downloading it to can run Sierra. But Apple’s little practical joke here is that if your Mac is a model released since the next major version of macOS, then Software Update refuses to download it. I’ve explained this here.
        So the only way I can download Sierra is to find an old Mac which could run Sierra, and download it on that. But Google and those other articles don’t explain that, because their authors didn’t bother to test whether it actually worked.
        Howard.

        LikeLike

      • 7
        EcleX on September 13, 2019 at 5:58 pm

        Amazing. Apple should keep a public repository of all macOS installers. That highlights the advantage of keeping backups of such installers. In my experience, any installer works (even if it is not the latest one), since from that you can update to the latest one for such main version.

        LikeLiked by 1 person

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