Mac software: Little Snitch
I write here of fine tuning online privacy and possibly security of Apple operating system.
This software is easy to mess up, so noobs …. don’t use on your active accounts. Probably don’t use at all until a trusted skilled person can sit with you for many hours.
Each website and software app (99 percent) wants to connect to the internet.
An individual website with a lot of advertising trackers can connect to 20 different advertisers. This means 20 lines of code or 20 pieces of data for advertising code.
Little Snitch might alert you 20x per page. It’s annoying and enlightening.
If DU members have a technically inclined person with a spare computer, they can try this for a couple months. Its going to take a while to get it right. Then that person has to teach you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Snitch
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Last edited Sat Aug 13, 2022, 07:32 PM - Edit history (1)
Indeed, browsers and apps flood the internet with requests. The trick is knowing what to look for, such as "call home" requests to developers, many in China, C&C (command and control) servers, or other things out there.
Blockers such as ublock origin only filter browser requests.
One could conceivably do this with a packet filter. I never used Little Snitch because it costs money and I favor free and open source software, and have not been in a sysadmin position for a long time, just a user.
As you said, it's heavy duty data parsing.
A bit off-topic ( I would have to upgrade systems to use LS)
I am currently fighting the recurring losing game of getting a new iOs device that won't back up to a mac unless the mac is upgraded. Last estimate was over a day for the download. I won't do iCloud backups because Apple has a key to iCloud backups and gleefully (?) gives it away to anyone with a warrant.
BTW, most routers are set to allow unfettered data passage if an app initiates the request ("connection established" ) so identifying suspicious requests is thr first step.
