Which websites are collecting my data or sending me data? The amount of data is usually small, but if this bothers you, you can block these connections (see below). Many applications will have updaters or “helpers” that stay in contact with the developers servers for various reasons, such as checking for application updates. What’s interesting are the annoying third-party programs that occasionally send and receive data in the background. When you expand these out, you’ll notice they are phoning home to, which means you can usually ignore it. The bulk of the items here will be 100% normal system processes-stuff that Apple uses just to make macOS run smoothly. On the left-hand side, you can see an exhaustive list of all connections sending amounts of data large and small. Which programs are sending and receiving data?
Or, it could be an application that you forgot you had and it’s working as designed. This may be a case of bloatware or it could be malware or a virus. Red flags in this section would be unfamiliar applications sending lots of data, or applications sending lots of data when you’re not using them. That’s pretty much expected since I use it to sync my photos and videos from iCloud to Google Photos. It also shows some statistics that highlight which connections are sending and receiving the most data.įor me, my Backup and Sync from Google is the major data hog.
On the right-hand side is the summary which shows your overall data upload and download numbers. If it feels like you’re using up more data than you should on a monthly basis, Little Snitch can provide some insight. But it’d be more peculiar if your banking or financial application or website were sending data to North Korea at odd hours of the night. For example, it’s completely normal for Amazon Prime Video to be sending a bunch of data from Seattle since that’s where Amazon’s located. In most cases, this won’t mean much-servers are located all over the globe, and just because your computer sends a packet or two to Romania or Switzerland isn’t particularly suspicious.īut if you are noticing strange traffic from an unknown application or a high volume of data being sent to a particular location, then it might be worth looking into. The most prominent element of the Little Snitch window is the global map that shows the geographic location of where your data is going to and coming from. In this quick overview, I’ll show you how it works and what it does.
Little Snitch is easy to use and free to try. It can also tell you if a website is hijacking your computer to mine cryptocurrency, or otherwise redirecting your data to shady locales.
This is a useful tool for rooting out malware on your computer or identifying which applications are hogging all your data. Little Snitch Network Monitor is a macOS application that tells you exactly where your data is going to and coming from on the internet. So why buy a separate app if you already have something built-in? The answer is simple: Little Snitch does more than just block or allow incoming network connections.
Little Snitch is a firewall application and, as you may know, your Mac has a built-in firewall that you can turn on and use to quietly block unauthorized incoming network connections. Find out which applications are phoning home or collecting and sending data on your Mac using this handy utility.