It's getting album art. You can probably turn that feature off, or just choose "deny all connections" or whatever Hands Off!'s equivalent feature is and not worry about it.

Fontgoddess, I am aware of how Hands Off! operates. I'm also able to read the many other responses here that, like yours, entirely miss the main point raised by the likes of Neal, Porkpiehat, Formica and myself. We're all saying that we can't think of any legitimate reason for a "music player" to establish connections with more than around 10 or 11 other Internet entities. Are there even that many album art resources available on the web?

Much more importantly, there is no believable, noncriminal or at least non-scummy rationale for any "music player" to call out to MORE THAN 50 (FIFTY!) different Internet entities in several different countries, as Instinctiv does, unless it is doing something substantially more than just playing music or scrobbling. And since Instinctiv's developers make absolutely no mention of it and, in fact, go to lengths to HIDE the utterly bizarre amount of callouts it makes so constantly to so many undocumented, unacknowledged websites with NO NAMES, NO HOMEPAGES, NO PHYSICAL ADDRESSES and NO NAMED OWNERS in Russia, China and other virtually lawless countries with well-documented reputations in both unorganized and organized crime, isn't it reasonable to assume that its users would not approve of whatever it's doing if they found out?

Please keep in mind that we don't actually know how many callouts Instinctiv truly makes because no one has yet had the patience to catalog more than 50 connections to different Internet entities before getting a cramp in their writing hand or simply giving up due to exhaustion, anger, frustration, or the simple belief that 50+ callouts is more than enough to prove that Instinctiv is up to no good!

And Fontgoddess, one last thing: Instinctiv does NOT allow you to turn off its callouts, as you suggested. Such a preference is probably verboten because it would nullify whatever shady, hidden money-making purpose that Instinctiv serves.

For those who think I and the others mentioned here are just paranoid conspiracy theorists, can you come up with any reasonable rationale for Instinctiv to call out to more than 50 different Internet entities, at least half of which refuse to reveal their identities? Maybe you should be the ones to catalog all of its callouts beyond the first 50 that are already known. Perhaps callouts #51 to #150 will prove that it really is just an innocuous but dogged collector of album art!

Okay. I misinterpreted your review's first paragraph. I use Little Snitch at the moment, and if any program's connections freaked me out like Instinctive has freaked you out, I'd be hitting "Deny All" so I wouldn't be fighting connection warnings as I was trying to quit and delete the program.

I most definitely think that the purposes of each connection should be more transparent, but that's something I'd like to see in Little Snitch and Hands Off! rather than in whatever individual program is attempting to make these connections, especially if I'm not inclined to trust the individual program. Instinctiv could make a lot of people a lot more comfortable by letting them approve image sources in the preferences, but anyone who's ever tried to find cover art for obscure music knows that you end up getting to some pretty exotic places, digitally, to find them — especially if you use Google's image search, which I suspect Instinctiv uses (we could probably find out for sure by corresponding with the company and arranging a third-party audit of the callouts and their exact purpose and mechanisms).

I am inclined to remain unconcerned about Instinctiv, as they have a spelled-out privacy policy [here: http://www.instinctiv.com/page/privacy-policy ] and are based in the United States so that policy can be legally enforced by US law if it turns out that any of their activity does not follow their described practices. But I'm not paranoid about my music data being aggregated as long as I know who is aggregating it and why. I've been a member of last.fm for a very long time and find mass-data-driven music recommendations interesting, if not yet consistently useful.

Considering blue_beetle's new axiom "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold," I think it's important to consider where the money is being made on this. Instinctiv seems to be making its money on selling vast databases of aggregate user music data and also targeting ads to their users at some point in the future, based on the information contained in their privacy policy. Currently, I am okay with this arrangement. If it becomes annoying or creepy in the future, I'll stop using their software and any related services (which, to be honest, I have spent less than 8 hours trying out).

Yes, I think it's useful to be somewhat paranoid, especially with free software from the internet. But there are generally ways to evaluate trustworthiness. Your evaluation led you to conclude that you did not trust this software. My evaluation led me to be largely unconcerned. I don't think either of us made an unreasonable decision, although I do hope that erasing your drive was hyperbole rather than a serious consideration.

In any event, I wasn't trying to be dismissive or condescending with my comment, although I see now how it could be interpreted that way. I'm sorry I annoyed you, as that was not my intent. It was also not my intent to leave a comment that was ultimately unhelpful, as that's a waste of everyone's time.

It would probably be constructive to arrange a privacy/security evaluation of this program, so that the concerns raised in this forum can be confirmed or allayed. Softpedia tested and certified it 10 days ago [ http://mac.softpedia.com/progClean/Instinctiv-Clean-76472.html ], but a more detailed report by a trustworthy party would be helpful for everyone interested in using this program but unsure about what servers it's trying to talk to on the internets.

Littlesnitch doesn't have nervous breakdowns. It quite clearly gives you the option of applying your rules to all, which is simple to do. And as said below, it's sending out for cover art. Guess what? The fact that it's looking for cover art in so many places is a GOOD thing. I've had no problems running this app, and it has become a favorite because of its no-hack flac support.