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another option: application-based firewalls
Authored by: voldenuit on Sep 04, '03 04:06:45PM

I would like to point out another option for those who dislike those misbehaved applications that will phone home or do what OfficeX does.

They allow you to set up rules for network access application by application. And because you probably cannot think of any good reason why you should allow some rude spreadsheet-program to use the network at all, you can select the apps that need to use the net for a living such as mail clients, web browsers etc.

The implementations I am aware of are sharewares:

little snitch
http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/

firewalk X
http://www.pliris-soft.com/products/firewalkx/

I agree with the previous posters that it is both stupid and rude to market products that will use ones own network ressources without asking. Raising awareness and complaining loudly to marketing should push this issue the same way where spyware already is: considered bad practise and a sufficient reason not to use a product.

German commercial law has the notion of "Treu und Glauben", a behavior you would reasonably expect from an honorable professional and I feel that things such as naive and brittle network-serial lookups are definitely not something one would tolerate from a business partner.



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