Little Snitch Experience?

Hi All, shweb posted a note about a program called Little Snitch in this thread (http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56614&highlight=snitch). Little Snitch basically lets you know whenever programs attempt to access the internet, so you can monitor for unintended accesses, such as might occur if your machine has been turned into a bot, or you have some programs that are unexpectedly "phoning home" to report usage.

After reading yet another scary article in the paper this AM about 'bots, I am interested in adding Little Snitch (at least for a while). Has anyone got any experience with it. Once added, can it easily be removed? Their web site suggests it is a kernel extension. I am worried that once in, it might not be easy to remove. Any experience that might suggest otherwise?

Also, as a long time user of Norton firewall products on my PC, I know that this kind of pop up alert can get really annoying after a while. Is there a way on Little Snitch to "white list" certain programs such that you don't get an alert? Alternately, is there a way to just have it write a log file and bypass alerts entirely?

Little Snitch has a very odd demo version - it says that it only allows for 3 hours (!) of free operation, so I am loathe to load it and try it unless it looks valuable.

Any user's feedback would be much appreciated... and yes I realize I am being paranoid and that the likelihood of my Mac being compromised is very low. However, it never hurts to be safe!

I used it and liked it.

8/10

I'd recommend you at least try it. Once installed and you restart (I think it did require a restart), you might be amazed by the amount of outbound traffic you see.

But be aware that little snitch does not catch every single little thing. I've seen it miss a few clever phone-home-rs.

How about uninstalling it though, and stopping it from popping up alert windows all the time for programs that you know are safe? Is all of this easy? I am leery of kernel extensions...

Oh it's very good. You can create black and white lists. And granular, too - it can work on a port, a server, or port-and-server, or any connection whatsoever. See pic:

Thanks giulio, just what I needed. I will go ahead and install. I know I am being paranoid, but as a computer "geek", I just gotta know! :dive: