EDIT: It seems this made it to HN. Is this my cue to Soatokify this article?

The NightOwl application has existed since 2018 and is used to automatically switch between light/dark modes on the operating system. It is an alternative to the built in macOS automatic mode which only switches when the user steps away from the computer.

However, the application has been bought out by “TPE.FYI LLC” in late 2022 that forcibly joins your devices into a botnet for use of market research, without your knowledge (other than the TOS in small text on the download page) or express consent (this feature cannot be turned off, even when the app is quit). This is documented in their terms of service.

  • LoafyLemon
    10•11 months ago

    You need to examine your devices packets and see what servers they’re going to. You can do that through Wireshark on Windows, or use an external sniffer to examine them.

    I’m not aware of any native apps for Mac that can do that, but maybe others will know.

      • LoafyLemon
        9•11 months ago

        Didn’t know they maintained Mac packages as well, that’s great.

    • @sijt
      8•11 months ago

      If you’re just interested in connections (and don’t care about packet inspection) you can use Little Snitch (paid) or LuLu (FOSS).

      Actually, all the Objective-See Foundation security tools are great and target specific classes of vulnerabilities, like LuLu for outgoing network connections, RansomWhere for detecting ransomwear by looking for encryption events, Oversight that monitors you cameras and microphones and a bunch of other really small, but really useful security utilities. Better than running a shady antivirus that’s going to suck up loads of resources and rely on signatures.

      • @technobyEnglish
        3•11 months ago

        +1 for Objective-See

      • @[email protected]
        2•11 months ago

        When I’m using VPN, my pihole can’t see the traffic, and won’t be able to block any ads or analyze the traffic. Also, some browsers use their own DNS, so the pihole can’t block that traffic either.

        Other than that, the pihole is a great tool to figure out what’s going on in your network. That’s how I found out that an Android phone is super noisy in my netwrok. Then I installed LineageOS+gapps, and it got better. It was still a bit noisy, so I reinstalled LineageOS, but this time without gapps and no play store. It finally got to the level I like, but unfortunately the world around me wasn’t compatible with this phone any more. :( But anyway thanks to pihole, I was able to figure out what kind of changes I need to make so that I’ll get the level of privacy I’m happy with.

        • @dangblingus
          2•11 months ago

          Are you using the VPN locally on your device or router level?

          • @[email protected]English
            1•11 months ago

            On the device level at this point. AFAIK, my VPN isn’t designed to work on a router level.

            Anyway, it makes sense that once you encrypt the traffic, the pihole won’t be able to see what’s going on.