Why I Switched Off Syphir

May 3, 2010 by admin 

As a habitually disorganized person in the physical world, I welcome smart tools that help me organize things virtually with little or no effort.

One of my favorite desktop apps to accomplish this task is Hazel, recommended by my favorite virtual organizer Merlin Mann. I set Hazel to automatically delete files on my desktop or downloads folder after 3 days of inactivity, forcing me to keep things organized.

So I was excited when Merlin espoused a similar app for Gmail on Mac Break Weekly recently called Syphir. While it doesn’t yet have all of the bells and whistles of Hazel, it is well on its way to enforcing rules that can keep inboxes tidier than Google’s filters can do. There’s just one problem. Take a look at this:

Google recently implemented new security safeguards that give users a better idea as to where accounts are being accessed from.

I was alarmed this morning when I noticed my account was being accessed from a half dozen IPs all over the country, including one that resolved back to MIT and others that resolved to Amazon EC2. After momentarily freaking out, I came to the conclusion that this was all Syphir traffic. Sure enough, once I disabled the Syphir service my account returned to normal.

In fairness, Syphir is handling user security responsibly. They utilize Oauth and OpenID linked to a Google account so passwords are not stored on their servers. Nevertheless, the fact that my account is being accessed from any number of servers throughout the United States simultaneously makes it next to impossible to detect unwanted visitors.

I will keep an eye on Syphir’s progress, but this flood of IMAP requests to my Gmail account is a deal breaker for me.

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