apsd connecting to albert.apple.com on TCP 443. Should I press button "Deny" or "Allow" Lots of cases like this. I don't know how to react..

Asking here isn't always the best way, generally others have asked and been answered in a number of places, some of which aren't populated by people who belong to the Church of Apple

I think you might have struck a chord here, Bettina. 😀 There's a whole lot of blind faith around here with "just trust them" attitude. Nothing is wasted in business, especially publicly owned businesses because there's an obligation to return to the investors and data is an extraordinarily rich resource that would most certainly not be "discarded" over ethics.

Isn't that the point of these forums… to find out stuff from learned people like yourself, so that we may protect ourselves from all manner of intrusive garbage? Always better to err on the side of safety - if the baby gets thrown out with the bath water - bye bye baby!

Unless you have a good reason to use Little Snitch, you should uninstall it. Most people don't want or need to know the hundreds of little connections that are made to external servers. Any connection to Apple servers is for the purpose of updates and normal system operations.

Matt

The apsd process is involved in Apple's push notifications. Any address ending in "apple.com" is one that is owned by Apple. There's no reason to be suspicious about this.

I would agree with Matt. Little Snitch opens a door to paranoia and fear in those who aren't familiar with all the normal background processes on Mac OS X. If I had a dime for every time I saw someone convinced they were being hacked because Little Snitch detected Time Machine trying to back up to a Time Capsule or Calendar trying to sync with iCloud, I wouldn't exactly be rich, but I'd be able to take my wife out for a nice dinner.

Little Snitch can be a useful tool for people who have the knowledge to be able to use it properly, but it can be trouble for those who don't. Why do you have it installed in the first place?

I'd have to disagree with the comments of Little Snitch opening a door to paranoia.

Is there really a good reason why you wouldn't want to know who or what is communicating with your machine, and shouldn't people be using whatever tools are available to protect themselves these days???

johnfrommokena wrote:

Is there really a good reason why you wouldn't want to know who or what is communicating with your machine

Of course: if you wouldn't understand the information you'll be receiving, there's not much point in receiving it. As I said, it can be a useful tool for people who know how to use it, or are willing to learn. However, if it's just going to cause someone who isn't tech savvy a lot of fear every time some mysterious process tries to make a call out, there's no point in having it.

Using Little Snitch's rules you can allow or disallow connections as you need them. And having a little control over that process is a good thing. People - just disallow a connection you don't understand "until quit" and then do a search on it. (duckduckgo is a good search engine that by all accounts doesn't track your searches.) Once you know what a connection is doing, you can restart the app and allow it, or continue with it disallowed.

Asking here isn't always the best way, generally others have asked and been answered in a number of places, some of which aren't populated by people who belong to the Church of Apple. You can ignore the fanboys and fangirls who insist that you should allow every outdoing and incoming connection. People who tell you you're in danger of becoming paranoid are either in denial that anything messed up is going on, or have a vested interest in your remaining clueless. You might also like to ensure that your mike and camera aren't able to be accessed by applications until you specifically allow it. And since it may be possible for some apps to turn your camera on without your knowledge, a small piece of tape over the lens may not be the worst thing you can do. Are they watching you? Probably not. Do you want them to? Probably not. So better safe than sorry.

thomas_r and others who think the hoi polloi aren't capable of understanding the concept of doing a search on a reported connection are not only impossibly snobby and big-headed, but also woefully out of touch. People, get a clue: There are many reasons to use Little Snitch. Especially in a post-Snowden world.

Having everything linked to the cloud these days (albert.apple is a cloud thing) isn't always the best idea. Ask any ingenue with compromising snapshots that are now online for all to view. Allowing everything Apple wants to do isn't either. Apple is not some nice little beneficial company doing things for your own good, it's looking after its own bottom line and corporate image. And it's selling or giving your information away as it sees fit just like every other major corporation these days.

I'd have to disagree with your characterization of me. You clearly did not read everything I said... you simply saw what you wanted to see and used that as a way to push your agenda. As I have said - this is the third time now in this topic - "it can be a useful tool for people who know how to use it, or are willing to learn." Are you suggesting that people who are not willing to learn how to use it should install it anyway?

I have seen plenty of people who were not interested in learning install it and then go into a paranoid frenzy because their Mac was checking for updates or trying to back up to their Time Capsule. Of course, they didn't understand that, they just saw some processes calling out and freaked, assuming that they must be infected with something, even though a quick Google search would have told them what the process was. Are you suggesting that this is useful?

As for your comments about Apple selling your information, do you really think that a company with as much money as Apple needs to do that, or that it would be in their best interests to do so? It's in their best interests to protect your information, and there is every evidence that they are doing exactly that, to the best of their abilities. Even ticking off the FBI in the process. Citing this kind of FUD does little to give your opinions credibility.

Look, everyone knows why we use Little Snitech, but we're not going there now. You can actually "Deny" almost everything until you see that something's not working. For example, Adobe's Flash Player, which gets updated every five minutes. During the download/installation process, Little Snitch will bug you to death. So simply "Allow" "Forever".

Otherwise Apple, or anyone else doesn't need to get into your world, so… DENY, DENY, DENY!!!

After a lot of back and forth about privacy the question what does albert.apple.com connect to is still unanswered. What does the "albert" code stand for? I think I should be informed what info Apple wants to draw from my machine. As long as this is not coming forth I also click "Deny".

Right! Apple is deep into the "spy" business, lately!

I know this is old, but I travel for work all the time and stay in people's apartments and Air bnbs, at least 5 times in the last 2 years people have tried to hack into my computer on networks i had to be on and it saved my *** by being able to deny .