<story><title>Little Snitch Mini</title><url>https://obdev.at/products/littlesnitch-mini/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KyeRussell</author><text>The reality is that this sort of control would only be attractive to a very very small fraction of users, and no, not just because ‘people don’t care about privacy’ or whatever. There are just very few situations where someone is going to be able to look at this sort of data and do anything meaningful with it, especially when a) most apps are justifiably internet-connected, and b) the homogeneity of public cloud infra means you can’t really tell anything apart from endpoint alone.</text></item><item><author>ary</author><text>Completely agree. Occasionally I run Charles Proxy[1] on my iPhone to analyze network activity and am disturbed by what I see. Software shouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to open arbitrary network connections without user consent&amp;#x2F;control, but we&amp;#x27;re not there yet to a large enough degree on mobile unfortunately.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.charlesproxy.com&amp;#x2F;documentation&amp;#x2F;ios&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.charlesproxy.com&amp;#x2F;documentation&amp;#x2F;ios&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>dmix</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always thought this should be a feature in an OS for advanced users. Combined with some OS level security optimizations it could be quite a powerful security feature for the paranoid and at-risk.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t tried mini but there&amp;#x27;s probably plenty of UX gains in between the standard Little Snitch fine control approach and the UBlock Origin style community curated defaults where control&amp;#x2F;customization is optional&amp;#x2F;on-demand.</text></item><item><author>ary</author><text>People are probably going to be confused between this and the &amp;quot;full&amp;quot; version of Little Snitch. My take on it is that Little Snitch Mini is something you can install on a non-technical friend or family member&amp;#x27;s computer whereas power users may want to stick with the existing offering.&lt;p&gt;I say this as a long time heavy user of Little Snitch. It&amp;#x27;s very annoying when you first get it installed, but it provides really useful control over what installed software is getting up to. After a time you settle into a natural rule set for your personal patterns and only see alerts when new or updated software tries a network connection that hasn&amp;#x27;t been seen before.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mini&amp;quot; strikes me as much more of a fire-and-forget product, which I appreciate but won&amp;#x27;t personally use.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eviks</author><text>But you don&amp;#x27;t have to do it yourself, that&amp;#x27;s what all the blocklists more knowledgeable people have created are for!</text></comment>
<story><title>Little Snitch Mini</title><url>https://obdev.at/products/littlesnitch-mini/index.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KyeRussell</author><text>The reality is that this sort of control would only be attractive to a very very small fraction of users, and no, not just because ‘people don’t care about privacy’ or whatever. There are just very few situations where someone is going to be able to look at this sort of data and do anything meaningful with it, especially when a) most apps are justifiably internet-connected, and b) the homogeneity of public cloud infra means you can’t really tell anything apart from endpoint alone.</text></item><item><author>ary</author><text>Completely agree. Occasionally I run Charles Proxy[1] on my iPhone to analyze network activity and am disturbed by what I see. Software shouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to open arbitrary network connections without user consent&amp;#x2F;control, but we&amp;#x27;re not there yet to a large enough degree on mobile unfortunately.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.charlesproxy.com&amp;#x2F;documentation&amp;#x2F;ios&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.charlesproxy.com&amp;#x2F;documentation&amp;#x2F;ios&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>dmix</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always thought this should be a feature in an OS for advanced users. Combined with some OS level security optimizations it could be quite a powerful security feature for the paranoid and at-risk.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t tried mini but there&amp;#x27;s probably plenty of UX gains in between the standard Little Snitch fine control approach and the UBlock Origin style community curated defaults where control&amp;#x2F;customization is optional&amp;#x2F;on-demand.</text></item><item><author>ary</author><text>People are probably going to be confused between this and the &amp;quot;full&amp;quot; version of Little Snitch. My take on it is that Little Snitch Mini is something you can install on a non-technical friend or family member&amp;#x27;s computer whereas power users may want to stick with the existing offering.&lt;p&gt;I say this as a long time heavy user of Little Snitch. It&amp;#x27;s very annoying when you first get it installed, but it provides really useful control over what installed software is getting up to. After a time you settle into a natural rule set for your personal patterns and only see alerts when new or updated software tries a network connection that hasn&amp;#x27;t been seen before.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mini&amp;quot; strikes me as much more of a fire-and-forget product, which I appreciate but won&amp;#x27;t personally use.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rolfrp</author><text>A good set and forget option for the non-tecnical or those that can&amp;#x27;t be bothered is &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.iantispy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.iantispy.com&lt;/a&gt;, basically just does it&amp;#x27;s thing and doesn&amp;#x27;t nag to upgrade.</text></comment>