Little Snitch: Keep Apps In Line
While Mac OS X does provide a firewall, it is not rules based so it does not allow as fine control over who and what accesses your network connection. Little Snitch from Objective Development does just this - it adds rule based protection for your Mac. As a rules based firewall, Little Snitch is not a replacement for the OSX firewall, it just provides program level (instead of IP and port level) control over your outgoing network traffic.
Little Snitch lives in the System Preferences panel and whenever an app tries to access your network/internet connection, it notifies you and asks you what you want it to do. You can either permanently or temporarily (until the app closes) allow or block an app as well as fine tune the conditions to allow the app to connect to any server, or only to the specified port or IP address.
In the Little Snitch Preferences Panel, you can see all the rules that have been created (including the default ones allowing important system processes to connect) and their conditions. Here you can also modify or delete existing rules or manually add rules. Manually added rules allow you to define an application and its permission (allow or deny), server (IP address or domain), port, and protocol. You can also change these settings for any previously created rule.
If you want to know who and what are accessing your network connection, want to prevent certain apps from “phoning home,” or are just paranoid, Little Snitch is for you. It is a shareware app and costs $24.95 for a one seat license.
See also ‘GlowWorm’ (http://glowworm.us/). Free and paid versions available.
I don’t understand why there isn’t more competition in this area for Mac; we’ve got a dozen high-quality freeware text editors and FTP clients, etc.
Yup, good review i have had this app since christmas time it stops apps from “phoning home” this is what i use to stop apps from reporting to the companies of mal serials. The pirates second best friend!!
there isn’t alot of competition because not many companies want to invest in programs like LS because it is rather controversial..it is sorta like DVD Rippers except there is a bigger excuse for DVD Rippers(Backing up own discs) LS’s excuse is that it could stop worms or trojans from phoning home to the maker and thus stops the worm or trojan from activating.
Little Snitch is a must-have-app.
how or what program can i use to hide my Ip Address, or mask it. can little Snitch do it?