A free alternatvie to LittleSnitch

deckstunt

I was looking for a free alternative to LittleSnitch, (an outbound firewall). And eventually I found two that seemed to fit the bill: NoobProof and TCPBlock.

I have both installed but I'm afraid NoobProof is just a bit too complicated for me (despite it being a simpler version of WaterRoof) so I don't actually use it.

But TCPBlock is easier to use. It hightlights any apps that makes an outbound connection to the net and you can decide to add them to a block list or not.

I think LittleSnitch has more functionality than TCPBlock but after trying and failing with NoobProof I've decided I don't what any more functionality.

And while I'm at it, after TCPBlock told me some of my apps (GPSBabel and Hydrogen) were 'phoning home' without my permission , I found Cocoa Packet Analyzer . A very nice free packet analyzer that helped me see what those apps were phoning home about (nothing too sinister just checking to see if they were up to date -but I still don't want them doing that with out my say so.)

So if any one was looking for a free version of LittleSnitch thats what I found.

Talisman

There's also Mocha. It logs any connection attempt to the computer's firewall. I find the ARP Table very handy when running virtual machines as it lists all of the connections.