I am running SETI at home version 7 on a mid-2013 Macbook Pro. I've noticed that whenever the screensaver is on, showing the data processing, if I move in front of the screen (for example, waving my hand), it stops processing and goes to the "Computer is in use" screen. Sometimes I'm not even within five feet of my computer when this happens.

Is the screensaver designed to detect motion or something? Or is it possible that I have a trojan with a motion detector on my webcam?

Thanks in advance for the help.

BOINC 7.2.39 was very bugged, plus there's an as yet unsolved problem with the screen saver, where it'll flicker-switch between the desktop and the screen saver.

Now, you can try 7.2.41, which does have most bugs solved, but for the screen saver problem, or go back to 7.2.33 (or whichever version you had before) and see if either version fixes this thing.

To be safe, I did forward your question to the BOINC developer for the Mac. He may know something that causes this.

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I haven't gotten around to downloading another version, but have you received any info on this issue?

If I had to take an educated guess, I would say that the part of BIONC that detects user activity, BOINCTRAY.EXE, or perhaps the OS itself, reports web cam activity as part of "user activity" that BOINCTRAY.EXE detects. Is there a BOINCTRAY.EXE equivalent for Macs?

If so, and if this is part of the OS's user activity reporting function that cannot be overridden by application developers, I would imagine a work around would be to suggest all users turn off or close the cover (if applicable) on their webcams.

Is there a BOINCTRAY.EXE equivalent for Macs?

Not as an external program, no. For the Macintosh, the idle detection is built into the client and BOINC Manager.

As for an answer from the developer, he did answer me something, but it's not of much help. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps he installed some software that reacts to motion in front of the webcam which is built into the Macbook Pro, but that is just a wild theory.

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