Nothing prevents companies that sell you proprietary software from also selling your data.

True. But in practice, a software company that's making money from users has a lot of incentive not to harm their brand, or open themselves up to competition, by being shady.

It does happen but users are waking up to the problem and companies are learning.

Well I'm assuming things like this helps:

  We do not share nor sell your data.

https://www.obdev.at/privacy-policy.html

However you may be referring to the same notion that nothing stops someone from murdering someone else.

Until the company is acquired. And then the disclaimer disappears silently.

Which... has never happened with the company behind Little Snitch.

And it never happened to every other company that has been acquired...

Outcomes from such clauses also hinge on whether metadata describing the operation of their system - such as logs showing who communicated with who - is your data, or their data.

Following recent changes to law here in Australia, for example, metadata is essentially the property of the state.

>I happily paid for Little Snitch and was comforted by the fact that I was the customer.

I paid for it, too. But then the upgrades went from complimentary to paid, and I bailed.

The new major version offers a lot more functionality. I looked into it and decided I wanted it, so I upgraded. I assume that I could have stayed with the old major version but I'm not sure.

With High Sierra you couldn't, the previous version doesn't work on it.

3.8.2 works with High Sierra

That is the traditional business model of software

Indeed. I'm especially suspicious of "security" software. Releasing free high quality security seems to be a popular attack vector for advertisers, spammers, hackers, and nation states.

This comment makes me chuckle. The idea that since you pay for something means that the company won't sell your data.

It doesn’t guarantee it, no. But it does mean that there are fewer incentives in place to do so.

I didn't mean to mock the sentiment and you're absolutely right to take a very cynical approach these days to any privacy promises.