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Little Snitch | Monitor What Applications are Spying on you

Posted by Scott | June 24, 2007 .

little snitchEverytime you start up an application, information about you or your computer may be sent back to the developer of the app.  Little Snitch is an application that lets you monitor what is being sent back and forth in the background that otherwise you wouldnt have any idea about.


Features:

  • Prevents applications from phoning home - good for if you were to download an application you didnt pay for.
  • Protects you from trojans, worms, and other network parasites - Many times these are present without your knowledge.
  • Provides a higher level of security for the paranoid - some people just have to know everything thats going on.

Standard firewalls base their rules on internet address and port numbers rather than application names.  This makes them usefull for filtering incoming traffic but not so much for outgoing.  Little Snitch fills in the gaps by filtering your outgoing connections and alerting you to any and all connections and lets you choose to allow or disallow it.

From the developers:
Little Snitch runs in the background and hooks into the operating system kernel while you are logged in. When an application tries to establish a network connection, Little Snitch intercepts the attempt and brings up an alert panel, telling you all the connection details including the name of the application which initiated the connection. You can either allow the connection, deny it or add a permanent rule for similar future-connections.

Download Little Snitch to montior applications making outbound connections.

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2 Comments so far
  1. pluto198 June 24, 2007 5:50 pm

    Now that Apple ran that Cancel or Allow ad, you can’t let your Windows friends see it… or you’ll never hear the end of it. :D

  2. Scott June 24, 2007 6:11 pm

    Indeed it can become annoying with the constant warnings, but you can at least set Little Snitch to remember your preferences to limit the amount of pop ups you get over time.