Mikuro
Crotchety UI Nitpicker
There's quite a lot of discussion about this in the Little Snitch forum. The developer has posted a reply here: http://forums.obdev.at/viewtopic.php?t=577&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15There are reports about that any program that installs its own Kernal Extension can "Phone Home" unbeknownst to Little Snitch.
I'm still not quite sure what to make of it, myself, but yes, kernel extensions can bypass Little Snitch.
Alas, you can't. Well, not easily anyway, and not with only Little Snitch. I generally just ask myself "why the heck should this app need an internet connection?" If there is no obvious answer I'm satisfied with (update checking does not satisfy me; I'll update my software when I'm good and ready, thanks), then I block it.Just a simple question (apologies if I seem dumb), but if Little Snitch detects an app phoning home, how can one know what info it is obtaining from your mac to allow or disallow it?
Little Snitch does tell you the server it's trying to connect to and the port, and in some cases that's all you need. For instance, I was a little nervous entering my Gmail password using third-party Gmail checkers like GmailStatus, but with Little Snitch I can verify that every network connection these apps make is to a trusted server, and I can allow connections ONLY to those servers.
If you want more details on what data is being sent, there are other tools such as tcpdump which will show you, but they only show you what's being sent AS it's being sent, not BEFORE. tcpdump is a command-line tool included with OS X. There are some easy-to-use interfaces for it, such as IPNetMonitorX, but I'm not aware of any that are free.