Unbeknownst to most, your when you provide your user name and password to the Google Notifier for either Gmail or the Google Calendar you are transmitting those credentials in plain text. In order to secure your credentials, you need to configure the Google Notifier to transmit your credentials via secure http (https). To do, follow the directions in this article on macosxhints.com. I have discussed security in regards to Gmail before (see: “Secure your Gmail“), but that wasn’t necessarily in regards to the notifier.
While this may not seem all that important to you, just take a moment to consider how much of your personally identifiable information is transmitted through email. Without securing your credentials, you are inviting anyone to sniff your packets and pull any information that they want.
As far as I know, this little tip only works on the wonder-filled Mac OSX operating system.
Yeah… Apple rocks.