Little Snitch v1.2.3

Pros
Protects you from spyware and other “phone home” applications.

Cons
How is protection a con?

The Bottom Line
Apple packs OS X with a more than respectable firewall and thus the need for a full-fledged firewall isn’t really there. Little Snitch, however, gives you the protection from yourself and lets you know what on your Mac is talking and who it’s talking to. This is needed and OB Dev’s Snitch is just perfect for the job.

Overall: 4/5
Ease of Use: 5/5
Usefulness: 5/5
Security: 4/5
Price: 4/5

Recommended
Yes.

Full Review
First off, we need to strongly point out how this is not a firewall. Little Snitch is a network monitoring program that informs you of any application running on your Mac that is attempting to contact the Internet. It gives you the control to say yes or no. Plain and simple. And this is the beauty of Little Snitch and we know you’ll appreciate the plain and simple of being protected from potential spyware. In short, Little Snitch will “prevent applications from ‘phoning home,’ protect you from trojans, worms, and other network parasites, show which applications send information over the Internet, [and] provide a higher level of security for the paranoid.” You got it. If you’re paranoid (and we are), then this is the ticket.

Installing Little Snitch is a cinch, and getting started couldn’t be any easier. Once you have Little Snitch installed, you’ll immediately start seeing little pop-up windows informing you that something is trying to call someone. You then get three choices on how to handle the connection: allow the connection once, until the application quits, or forever. You can even specify if it should only use the current port, all network ports, current server, or current server and port. Good, strong security.

This reminds us that the reason we gave Little Snitch a four out of five for security is because for what it does, it does it very well. Again, this isn’t a firewall and thus we won’t rate it as one. Informing you of any application’s actions when it involves the Internet is a great thing and Little Snitch does this very well.

After using Little Snitch for a week, we felt much safer in our surfing. We found lots of programs that wanted to phone home for what we thought was no reason. We figured that it was probably checking for updates but still, it was nice to know a non-network application was making a network connection… and we could stop it in its tracks cold!

We also like the fact that Little Snitch cannot be pushed out of the way. Little Snitch can’t be shut up! Even full screen programs, such as MediaCentral, cannot hide its tracks as Little Snitch’s window popped right up over the nice black background of the media player to reveal that it was trying to call the folks at Equinux. Nice.

Overall
In this day and age where Windows users have to really be on guard as to what their PCs are doing, Mac users will enjoy the security assurance Little Snitch offers. While not a priority to stop spyware on an operating system that seems to be void of any spyware - for now - it’s sure to come and Little Snitch is going to be your first line of defense on that fateful day. Until then, protect yourself from other “friendly” programs today and be in full control of your Mac.

At half the price of the cheapest third-party firewalls that have similar functionality of Little Snitch, you really can’t go wrong with this program.

Price: $24.95

[tags]spyware,network,protection,ob,dev,little snitch[/tags]