When you visit to a website, there are multiple connections happening behind the scenes, not only one connection, like it appears.
For an idea, some conservative estimates:
– a reasonably popular site – 25+ connections
– KeriBlog – 4
– Buzzfeed – 50+
It’s a good idea to monitor these, and approve / deny what you feel comfortable with connecting to your laptop.
Example:
Why, out of nowhere, is Celebuzz site trying to connect to my machine?
At the time of this connection request, I was not surfing gossip sites, but I have in the past, which is why the site is checking in on me.
Connection denied.
How I’m doing this
I use a program called Little Snitch.
(this is NOT an endorsement)
It installs deep in my operating system, so no matter which program I’m using (iTunes / internet browser / photo editing software), it halts all incoming connections, until I tell it how to proceed.
It looks like this:
You teach it rules (example: I accept all connections from Google.ca, I deny all connections to many ad serving URLs).
I deny everything with “track”, “metrics” or “ads” in the URL, and don’t much notice a decline in quality of browsing.
It’s free to try, and a licence is $35. I bought mine like, 4 years ago, still works.
How this helps
Keeping your computing environment as clean as possible helps. And monitoring software, while it doesn’t replace an anti-virus software, can help catch malicious connections.
A small example:
While streaming TV from one-of-those sites, the site asked to have some dedicated space on my hard drive…
Had I not stopped the connection, the website would have not only connected to my laptop,
but stored up to 1 MB of “something” on it!
The video played fine even after I denied it access.
They’re not posting free, timely TV episodes because of kindness, because they care if I’m up-to-date on The Office. This is the price guys.
