“The fear-mongering… starts with the headline, ‘Apple updates Macs for first time without asking — to foil hackers,'” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “And, no, I am not posting the link. You can easily look it up if you want.”
“But it’s not the first time. It happens any time those malware detection strings are updated or added to. As for regular software updates, consider the options offered in the App Store preference pane in OS X Yosemite. You have four interrelated options under, ‘Automatically check for updates,’ that include the options to download updates in the background, install app updates, OS X updates, and system data files and security updates,” Steinberg writes. “The NTP bug fix clearly fits into the latter category.”
“What this means is that you can uncheck any of these options at any time and not receive any relevant updates unless you go direct to the App Store and select the ones you want. You have full control, and Apple isn’t going to infringe on your privacy. But if you choose to have everything done in the background, so be it,” Steinberg writes. “If you want to be cautious, just say no. It’s a real simple process… When people want to tell you that Apple might be doing something suspicious in pushing updates to your Mac behind the scenes, they are just plain wrong.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple releases OS X NTP Security Update; Mac users advised to install ASAP – December 22, 2014