28 June 2011

Undercover likes Lion

We just released Undercover 4.5. This update makes Undercover fully compatible with the yet to be released Lion (Mac OS X 10.7). In addition, the new version improves location tracking on Snow Leopard and Lion.

Undercover 4.5 is compatible with Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. You should install it on all your Undercover-equipped Macs. Simply download the installer from the Undercover page and run the installer.

16 comments:

Lars said...

Is undercover constantly checking my location?

The location indicator in lion menu bar is constantly on and tells me that uclocator is asking for my location

Peter Schols said...

The location indicator shows apps that have requested your Mac's location in the last 24 hours.

Peter
Orbicule

Greg said...

I suspect Lars may be correct; I have a MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.6.8, and since the upgrade to UnderCover v4.5, locationd is constantly accessing mac-services.apple.com, trying to update location info. It spends 5 of every 10 seconds contacting the server. I thought this was only supposed to happen in the event the computer was tagged as stolen.

Peter Schols said...

Hi Greg,

This issue has been fixed already, but has nothing to do with the indication in the location menu itself.
Please contact our support and we'll get back to you asap.

Peter

Lars said...

OK, so that tells me Undercover requests my location information at least once every 24 hours.. Why?
I thought it was only gonna request location information if i tag my mac as stolen..
What do you use this information for?

daneastside said...

hmm... interesting, ok that answers 2 questions i had thanks

Anonymous said...

@Lars: Undercover does eager location loading: it already gathers your location and caches it but only on your local Mac and only in-memory. This means that in case of theft, it can transmit the location right away.

If you unselect the 'Locate if not stolen' checkbox at undercovercenter.com, the location is never transmitted to our servers if your Mac is not reported stolen.

Peter
Orbicule

Lars said...

Ahh, i see!
Thanks for clarifing!

David Burney said...

I'm considering Undercover for a new MacBook Air. Can you elaborate on the firmware password feature as it relates to Lion?

Moustafa said...

Hi Peter Is this feature 'Locate if not stolen' new in undercover 4.5? Did undercover collect this information previously before Lion OSX, and was it stored on the server and/or the local disk? If so where is it located? I would like to remove this information both on undercover server as well as on my mac. I unchecked the 'Locate if not stolen' feature, would this hinder the ability to recover my mac if stolen? Please let me know. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

David,

The firmware password utility still works on Lion. Please contact support if you want us to send it to you.

Peter
Orbicule

Anonymous said...

Moustafa,

The locate if not stolen feature has been there since the very beginning. No location info is stored on your Mac (regardless of the setting), and no location info is stored on the server either, if you enable the feature. You may remove old locations yourself in Undercovercenter.

Peter

Owen Billcliffe said...

Hi,

My observation with Lion is that the new Location menu bar is present constantly, showing UC as having requested my location. That's all well and good but it's the only app that needs my location and I don't need to be reminded 24 hours a day that it asked.

So, is there any way of filtering UC out so that the app doesn't show up permanently in the Location menu item? Also, if I turn my computer off and then it's stolen and someone logs in, is Lion going to ask them if they mind if UC transmits their location? Because any thief with an ounce of common sense is going to say 'No' to that request.

And even if it doesn't ask, the Location Services menu bar is going to be there telling them that something called UC has asked for their location.

All in all, the Location Services menu item is a PITA and also defeats the purpose of having a secret location-tracking app installed as it's not secret any more. I realise it's Apple's doing, not yours, but do you have any suggestions?

Anonymous said...

Hi Owen,

We fully agree that the Core Location menu is a bad thing for theft-recovery software. Like you are saying, it's totally beyond our control, and there is no way to hide an app from the location menu. However, you can disable the menu by dragging /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.locationmenu.plist out of its folder. That will remove the menu. You can always bring the menu item back by moving the plist file back in its folder.

Peter Schols
Orbicule

Jonathan Mitchell said...

I've just installed Undercover 4.5 on a Mini running 10.5.8. I noticed during installation that it stated it was installing Tiger-Leopard, not Snow Leopard, and I now see that the installation folder doesn't include uclocator or ldutil, as it does in the folder on my son's MB which also runs U 4.5 on 10.5.8; but unlike the MB it does include libewpsapi.2.0.7.dylib. On testing 'Report Stolen' I see it reports the screenshot and the IP addresses, but no location, and the kml file gives latitude and longitude as 0.0. Is this an installation error, or does UC 4.5 work differently on desktops to laptops?

Is there

Anonymous said...

Hi Jonathan,

If your Macs running 10.5.8 (Leopard), the Undercover installer should install the Tiger-Leopard package automatically, which is correct. In that case, no uclocator or ldutil will be installed. libwpsapi should be installed. If that's not the case, please contact support. We will get back to you asap.

Peter Schols
Orbicule