iTunes keeps asking to allow or deny incoming connections

I was plagued by this problem and was surprised it hasn’t yet been addressed by Apple (to my knowledge). It was very obnoxious, and I admit I was one person who turned my firewall off to prevent the pop up from happening.

Your fix seemed to work on my MBP. Thanks!

If you have the firewall enabled and change the icon (or probably any other file) within the iTues application package, you’ll get the “incoming connections” message every time you open iTunes.

Re-installing iTunes as described will fix the problem, until you try changing the icon.

It’s probably some package-signing security thing, but annoying for those who want both the firewall and a custom icon.

To the comment “that isn’t a bug,” I say “Bollocks”

If Apple simply provided the “Always Allow” option when it detected a change and displayed this warning dialog then it could be said to be ‘not a bug’.

The incompetence and user-contempt that the current implementation displays can only be described as a bug and one Apple could fix very simply as I described above.

Lazy and dumb Apple.

Please fix this.

i have this problem ,but when i try this method, it only works once, then when i load up itunes again, same problem. ive looked all around forums etc, to no avail!

I have also had this problem. There is no need to delete ITunes, just download and reinstall, this will fix it.
I have done this on my Macbook Pro and Mac Pro and they are now both free of this annoying popup message.

Disabling Home Sharing from Advanced menu didn’t solved this problem on my MacBook. But I can remember that this problem appeared on my MacBook when I enabled Home Sharing on both my MacBook and iMac. This problem appears only on my MacBook, I guess because I use it to sync my iPhone 3GS with it? This is the only difference between my MacBook and iMac.

I have this problem with adium. Thinking about turning off the firewall but still resisting.

Duncan was apparently molested by apple as a child and still harbors bad feelings about it. ITunes settings and Mac settings have the options to “always allow” incoming network connections but changing itunes’ stock program files apparently compromises security. If you’ve done this then iTunes will always prompt you before allowing network connections.

I had this inconvenient alert for about a month, probably caused by a program i used to customize my icons. Reinstalling iTunes fixed the problem right away, it takes a few minutes.

This has been going on for a few months and it’s not that hard to click allow but I knew something was wrong which worried me. This was exactly what I needed to do to fix it, thanks! :D

I’m having the same problem, and not only for iTunes: Coda, MusicBrainz Picard, and other programs continue to bug me with this. No matter what I do (removing, reinstalling, etc), nothing seems to help, so I turned the firewall off completely. Definitely a bug. OS X 10.6.4

I have this problem – on three Macs, running either 10.5 or 10.6. I have tried reinstalling, clearing caches, rebuilding my library from the XML file, and deleting iTunes from the list of applications allowed to make connections in OS X’s Firewall, all without success. It’s not Home Sharing either because that wasn’t turned on until a couple of weeks ago and I’ve had this problem for months. It’s not because I’ve customised iTunes, because the only one I’ve ever made is to move the media library to Users/Shared/Music on one Mac and edit the ACL so that my wife and I can access the same library (and I did that years ago). Aaand… it even happened with iTunes 9.2 downloaded and reinstalled from scratch on a clean install of 10.6 on a reformatted HD.

Unlike Jake, though, I’m not having this problem with any other application. I’d say it’s definitely either iTunes or OS X at fault, but I’m not holding my breath for a fix any more…

Just tried the method described by Shane, it works! Thanks!

Shane, your solution didn’t work for me. Deleting the file disabled the Firewall. After activiting it again there were no rules anymore.

PList fix works in 10.6, too THANKS!

Shane Cook got it spot on trash the com.apple.alf.plist – thanks SO much.

Shane Cook solution was right on the money. Being new to Mac, I probably would have given up on finding file if it was not for “tdled” further clarifying file location. Thank you to both.

Never saw this problem in iTunes, but on many other apps such as Numbers. I removed the com.apple.alf.plist file and rebooted (new one was rebuilt by startup) and it seems to have fixed the problem. The file definitely had some strange stuff in it – two elements in the section with hex data in them. The file was well-formed, however.

Thanks!!! I deleted the iTunes.app, re-startet and installed iTunes freshly. It solved the problem!! The main point is to remove the iTunes.app completely which, I think, forces the system to clean also something related and that solved the issue.

The method above didn’t seem to work for me, this problem has plagued me for months and I’ve been meaning to work on it. But after I turned home sharing off it doesn’t do this anymore :)

Shane Cook: Navigate to -> Macintosh HD -> Library -> there will be a file called, com.apple.alf.plist delete it, reboot and your done. IT WORKS!

Well, NEVER MIND!!! Didn’t fix it afterall! It simply turned the firewall off. When I went back to the security preferences in System Prefs..I found it turned off and all the apps missing from the list of ones I had authorized. I added iTunes again as before and when I opened iTunes, it again asked me to allow it….I tried opening and closing it several times. It’s back to it’s old behaviour. I guess it is screwed up for good. Sometimes Apple makes me furious. Why not just make a patch and fix it?

Disabling home sharing worked for me.