Little Snitch Issues

[andyherman]

I've been running Little Snitch for years (essentially since I got my Early 2009 Mac Pro). I bought a Mac Pro 7,1 and had to upgrade Little Snitch to run in Catalina. I'm beginning to think it was a big mistake.

On my Early 2009, yes I had to allow/deny connections, but OMG. In the new version, it's infuriating! Logging onto the Wall Street Journal (or virtually any other site) and even just in Mail, they're an unending stream of permission requests. It's absolutely absurd! I spend more time approving or denying connections than reading the material. What's worse is if you go to the WSJ in Firefox, then Chrome you have to go through all of those actions again.

I just renewed my WSJ subscription on my Early 2009 Mac Pro a few months ago and NOT ONCE have I had to respond to a connection request (still use that machine for "legacy" Adobe software). I'm getting to the point with the 7,1 that I'm considering dumping Little Snitch as it's becoming a real irritation with the unending popup requests.

Anyone else seeing this?

 

[chrfr]

I've been running Little Snitch for years (essentially since I got my Early 2009 Mac Pro). I bought a Mac Pro 7,1 and had to upgrade Little Snitch to run in Catalina. I'm beginning to think it was a big mistake.

On my Early 2009, yes I had to allow/deny connections, but OMG. In the new version, it's infuriating! Logging onto the Wall Street Journal (or virtually any other site) and even just in Mail, they're an unending stream of permission requests. It's absolutely absurd! I spend more time approving or denying connections than reading the material. What's worse is if you go to the WSJ in Firefox, then Chrome you have to go through all of those actions again.

I just renewed my WSJ subscription on my Early 2009 Mac Pro a few months ago and NOT ONCE have I had to respond to a connection request (still use that machine for "legacy" Adobe software). I'm getting to the point with the 7,1 that I'm considering dumping Little Snitch as it's becoming a real irritation with the unending popup requests.

Anyone else seeing this?

This is normal. You can run Little Snitch in silent mode for a while, and it’ll allow everything through but you can then go in and edit your rules later to block what you want.

 

[ChromeCrescendo]

I have never used Little Snitch but have heard of it. I am expecting my MP 7,1 this week and wondering if Little Snitch would be worth the price

Is there a big learning curve? It does not seem as if it is "plug and play" - how will I know whether I want to allow or deny a certain App or software to connect to the Internet if I have no prior experience with making such a determination?

 

[HenryAZ]

Have you tried making a backup of your ruleset on the 2009 machine, then importing it into the new machine?

 

[HDFan]

it's infuriating! Logging onto the Wall Street Journal (or virtually any other site) and even just in Mail, they're an unending stream of permission requests.

It's doing exactly what it is supposed to do - let you approve any connection requests that a program makes. You could blame the WSJ for having all of those links to other sites. You can change the mode to permissive, or just uninstall.

Is there a big learning curve? It does not seem as if it is "plug and play" - how will I know whether I want to allow or deny a certain App or software to connect to the Internet if I have no prior experience with making such a determination?

Little snitch does maintain a database of well-known applications. When a connection approval request comes up you can see if it is known to be safe. If it isn't in the database then you have to decide what your confidence level is for that particular vendor's software.

After the initial install there are a ton of requests, but they die down after the initial set is approved. It would be nice if Little Snitch knew which apps and internet sites were safe, but that's simply not possible.

 

[bogdanw]

What's worse is if you go to the WSJ in Firefox, then Chrome you have to go through all of those actions again.

Give browsers access to connections over TCP 443 and 80 ports.