[Discuss] Little Snitch,tcpblock, other Mac OS TCP/IP cops?

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Scott Ehrlich
> 
> I was recently introduced to Little Snitch and tcpblock as firewalls
> for the Mac.    At home, I downloaded and  tested each, along with
> reviewing Mac's built-in firewall.

What are you trying to accomplish?  I find the software firewall is
basically useless on the mac, because no services are running.  If no
services are running, then there's nothing for the firewall to do - it's all
blocked automatically.  The software firewall is only useful in operating
systems where services may be running, but you want to block them from
listening to traffic anyway.  This is the case for both windows & linux (and
all servers, just in case any hacker is able to launch some service you
didn't want running) but in win & lin, you tend to have some services
running by default, even if you didn't turn them on explicitly.

This is an area, where I think win & lin are both foolish, and mac is
surprisingly, the one who got it right.