iTunes music sharing on, on firewall

[dogbone]

Wasn't sure how to word the title. I've got i'Tunes music sharing turned on in the 'Firewall' pane of the 'Sharing' preferences.

If I don't do this then my two macs connected over an ethernet broadband router won't see each other's files.

Does this open me up to internet hacking or is it normal to have this option on when sharing iTunes over a local network? The thing is that I don't remember having to turn this on in the past but I do now?

 

[stridey]

Wasn't sure how to word the title. I've got i'Tunes music sharing turned on in the 'Firewall' pane of the 'Sharing' preferences.

If I don't do this then my two macs connected over an ethernet broadband router won't see each other's files.

Does this open me up to internet hacking or is it normal to have this option on when sharing iTunes over a local network? The thing is that I don't remember having to turn this on in the past but I do now?

Anytime you want to let in incoming traffic, you have to open a hole in the firewall. AFAIK, it's pretty safe to open up a hole into iTunes (what's a cracker going to do? Run a malicious song?) though, so I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[dogbone]

It's just that I don't remember ever turning this on in the past. But if it is normal then that's OK.

 

[Eraserhead]

if you don't have iTunes music sharing on through the firewall already then iTunes will ask if it can open the port, it did that with me, when I fresh installed OS X on my iMac.

Nothing to worry about