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Comment by vicaya | Hacker News Reader

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vicaya·

Nah, the warning comes from the extended attribute on the application folder/zip. It has nothing to do with the log.

You can disable the warning by a command line:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine <path_to_your_program>

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The extended attribute records that the file is quarantined, but it doesn't contain the detailed information about where the file came from. It just has an identifier that's used to look up in the database. For example, here's the quarantine info for a file in my Downloads folder: 0002;50e77ce1;Safari.app;BF047C49-2539-4536-A584-E69FDE328A2C. I don't know what the first two fields are, but the third is the app that downloaded it, and the forth is a UDID, which is presumably the identifier for the quarantine event.

Furthermore, even once a file is out of quarantine, the Get Info dialog can still tell you where it was downloaded from, precisely because of this database.

UUID, not UDID. The latter is an unique identifier for iOS devices.

Oops, typo. Too bad I can't edit my post anymore.

There is a reason why the marking of the file and the database containing the download information are separate. It is for personal privacy! If you copy or move the file or someone else runs whatever it is, the "quarantineness" is still there, but the personal information about where and when you downloaded it will not be accessible. The "taint" associated with the downloaded object will remain with the file, but the personal and potentially private information does not.

NAH, the warning is merely initiated by the extended attributed. The information in it comes from elsewhere (presumably the database).

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