Apple Removes macOS Filter That Allows Its Own Apps To Bypass Your Firewall

Firewalls are designed to help protect our computers from online threats (to a certain degree), but for some reason, Apple included a filter in macOS to allow its own apps to bypass firewall filters that you’ve set in place. We can only assume that this was done to allow Apple’s apps to run and function as intended, but it’s not so good for security or privacy reasons.

This was met with a bit of backlash from developers, but the good news is that it looks like Apple has heard their concerns and in macOS Big Surf 11.2, the company has since removed those filters. What this means is that it basically evens the playing field where Apple’s apps need to be approved manually if they want to bypass a firewall.

Granted, this could potentially cause some issues with how these apps function, but ultimately, the choice is in the hands of the user where they will be able to block those apps if they want, or monitor them to see what kind of data is being transferred and so on. This should also allay any concerns that hackers could create malware that takes advantage of these forced-bypass and compromise systems.

Note that these changes are currently only in the beta 2 of macOS Big Sur 11.2, so if you’re not part of the macOS Public Beta or a developer, then you’ll have to wait for the public release, which we have no idea when that will be.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Computers
Tags: macOS, Privacy, Security