[geeks] Apple applications phoning home

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Mark <md.benson at gmail.com>
>Date: 2007/10/19 Fri AM 03:32:04 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Apple applications phoning home

>On 19 Oct 2007, at 05:05, Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>
>> I just noticed that every time I go to preferences in "Address Book"
>> on MacOS Tiger, it tries to connect to port 80 at
>> configuration.apple.com.
>>
>> I blocked its request since I see no reason for it to do that, but if
>> you block its outgoing connection, you cannot use the preferences
>> dialog.
>>
>> What kind of idiotic crap is that?

<snip>

>Mine doesn't throw na alert when I run it (I use 'Little Snitch -  
>great tool if you have port paranoia) so I'd suspect it's the dotmac  
>sync client (which I have unblocked on port 80 and 443). Quite a few  
>of Apple's apps phone home to check for software updates, dotmac  
>details, and the like. I have no reason to believe any of it is  
>unnecessary. A ping and whois of the IP there confirms the address  
>belongs to Apple Inc. so it's not 'malicious'.

I think the question is not "is it malicious", but "why?" Step back and think about this - he can't change preferences in his local address book without internet access. That is a problem, IMHO.

I can understand if there is a .mac sync client that *wants* to access apple.com sites in it's normal operation, but it should handle the lack of internet connectivity better (i.e. cache changes until connectivity is restored)...

Lionel