5 ms·
Those of you who own Little Snitch...do you regularly block outgoing connections from applications you regularly use?
by iends 10y ago
Those of you who own Little Snitch...do you regularly block outgoing connections from applications you regularly use?
- BugsJustFindMe 10y agoPeople do it for pirated copies of Adobe software because of how much it phones home. Do a quick google search and you'll find many sn/crack/warez (do people still use that word?) instructions talk about editing hosts files or installing Little Snitch.
- n1000 10y agoI do it even though I have legal copies of Microsoft Office and Adobe software. It is incredible how often these apps send around data even while I am not using them and have no live.com account.
- vetinari 10y agoHow did you get around not having live.com for MS Office? I've got the retail box of 2016 for Mac (not the 365 one) and it still required me to make one :( At every launch, it connects to login.live.com and live.com.akadns.net.
- konceptz 10y agoI do. I often don't like ms products sending crash information but need those updates. It's manual but something I prefer.
- cygned 10y agoI am always impressed how many connections Microsoft Office for Mac tries to open when starting it.
- Maarius 10y agoYes, I do, why?
- salzig 10y agoi block all desktop apps from accessing google analytics. Don't want my desktop activities to be tracked with google analytics.
- evgen 10y agoI have used Little Snitch for quite a while, then switched to Hands Off because I liked its interface a bit better and the ability to set a rule that would clear at reboot was a win. I regularly block outgoing connections; tracking attempts by Google, Apple & Microsoft (no PowerPoint, you don't need to check in to Skype at each launch...), limiting a lot of apps to loopback connections rather than full outgoing connectivity, etc. Another benefit is that once I get over the initial rule configuration hump (and it is a real PITA for the first week or two) what I end up seeing are the anomalies and so I can pay closer attention to what has changed or where something is trying to connect that I might want to think about.
- masklinn 10y ago> the ability to set a rule that would clear at reboot was a win Little Snitch provides that: https://www.obdev.at/Images//littlesnitch/index/more_features_temporary_rule_options.png https://www.obdev.at/Images//littlesnitch/index/more_feature... > limiting a lot of apps to loopback connections rather than full outgoing connectivity and that
- evgen 10y agoYeah, it was there but well hidden and an additional click with the mouse vs. being able to do it easily via keyboard. Small things like this really added up to push me to Hands Off, but I may give Little Snitch a look again if the price for upgrading from 2.0 is not unreasonable...
- iamben 10y agoYes, lots. It's amazing what makes (/tries to make) connections over the course of a day.
- nullstyle 10y agoI'm looking at you Adobe Software.
- pidg 10y agoYes - anything that doesn't need to be accessing the internet. Plus Google things that phone home. It's fun to watch them get frustrated and light up red in the activity monitor as they desperately try to send back metrics.
- nosuchthing 10y agoIf you use Google as your DNS server, sometimes various Google services will just send the same requests over port 53 to 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 instead of the normal IP.
- jacobush 10y agoI have blocked everything Adobe Lightroom and its little cloud friends try to do, except on install to validate key. And a bunch of other apps / Apple services. If it wasn't for Little Snitch I wouldn't feel at ease running Mac instead of Linux. For me MacOS is a decent compromise between privacy and convenience because of Little Snitch. (Except that I implicitly add to the problem by accepting Mac in my life, leading by example and all that. Still struggling with that. But I tell myself I have bigger fish to fry.)
- therealmarv 10y agoQuestion: Do you use an Android phone? Just saying.... you have much bigger problems on this kind of devices.
- vetinari 10y ago> you have much bigger problems on this kind of devices. Which might be true, but two wrongs do not make one right. I.e., leaking data on mobile devices does not make leaking data on laptop ok.
- __jal 10y agoQuestion: are you a full-time nudist? Just saying, someone has seen you naked, so why not everyone?
- chmars 10y agoNo, I use it for monitoring only.
- jfnixon 10y agoAbsolutely. Every now and then I have to click a few buttons, but that's OK. I like knowing what installed programs are doing.
- patrick_haply 10y agoAside from blocking unwanted telemetry, I have multiple profiles that I switch between depending on the network I'm connected to. If I'm tethered to my phone, I restrict almost all traffic unless it's something I'm using so I can conserve data. The profile assigned to my home network is a lot more open.
- __jal 10y agoYes. Applications only get access to the resources needed to do what I want them to. Sorry, nobody gets telemetry. It is a bit of a pain the first couple times you run a new app, but settles down fairly quickly. OS X upgrades are far worse - Apple seems to build a dozen new weird little things that want to connect to god knows what every release, and the right answer there is, for instance, `sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.gamed Disabled -bool true`
- lalos 10y agoThe Photos app makes requests to some concerning endpoints that I wish they could add a way to disable those features, like "FaceRecognition" or the like. Which it is implied that the iPhone photos app probably does it too. Not sure what data it uploads but there is no info surrounding this.