Have you ever wanted to be able to control your computer remotely, without the technical hurdles (or firewall issues) that come with more serious solutions like VNC? You might take a look at Gmail Remote Command, a free Windows app that will check your Gmail inbox every 60 seconds and, if it sees you've sent it certain preconfigured keywords, will execute commands on the host computer. GRC can make your computer run programs, open URLs, or shut down. This definitely isn't for people who have a need for high security, as it's basically a backdoor into your system for anyone who knows your e-mail address (though you can make your keywords hard to guess), but for more mundane situations it could come in handy--in particular, you could send yourself an e-mail from your cell phone and control your computer from anywhere in the world, or, at least, anywhere you have reception.[Via Lifehacker]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-27-2006 @ 12:24AM
Neo-Fight.tv said...
A little concerning... I can see hackers randoms spaming gmail accounts with lists of words in an attempt to mess your machine up, although it's not like you'd program your system to remotely format your hard drive...(or would you? Hmm... think of the time you could save)...
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5-30-2006 @ 2:40AM
Osama Salah said...
It's as concerning as anything else that does not implement countermeasures to bruteforce attacks like throttling the number of requests etc.
The utility is nothing new, here is a similar free
application: http://www.runtime.org/remotebymail.htm
If you want me to use such a tool then the source code should be open for review or at the minimum it should come from a reputable source.
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6-02-2006 @ 11:43AM
moorto said...
I use GetByMail, much more power:) and not only with Gmail:
http://www.getbymail.com/
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