[pov] Re: Viruses on Macs

  • From: Suzanna Leigh <leigh.suzanna@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: pov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:27:32 -0800

Good information! Thanks Michael.
On Jan 14, 2011, at 11:23 AM, Michael Elenko wrote:

Randy,

You touched upon some parts of the truth here for Macs.

it is well known in the technical Mac community that Norton is notorious for misdiagnosing viruses on Macs. The source of most alleged virus problems with Macs is quite simply Norton. It is a less-than-wonderful application on the Mac platform.

Here is just the first post from the Apple support site i found.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2692504&tstart=0

There are very very few loose and wild viruses for the Mac. The one or two or three you may have read about has been proof of concepts in labs or malware limited to risky software from obscure sources. There are obnoxious files such as adware on all computers, but they are not really considered viruses and don't cause the deep damage.

Over the past three years I have encountered about a dozen well- intentioned emails about Norton and Macs; none of them have panned out as legit virus infections--it they did it would be news (my its very nature a Mac virus would involve a lot of users), and more folks living on the bleeding edge technically than us would have blown some whistles.

Legit viruses on Macs did happen back in the OS 6/7/8/9 days and a lot of times they were embedded in PC Word and Excel files that were opened and shared on Macs. The Macs were more like carriers. Got one myself, but this was 20 years ago when security protections were a tad less than now. . .

Since I work at home and manage corporate files, I have to have a virus detection system. I recommend ClamXav.
http://www.clamxav.com/

It's free and constantly being updated and non-intrusive. When I ran it on my system I appreciated that it found a bunch of tracking cookies in my browser files that I didn't want there. Some tracking cookies are good and necessary, but others just serve up targeted ads. Yuck!
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100626045613AA1iZeb

Macintouch has been one of the most authoritative sites for the past twenty years. Their security report page gives a lot of experiences and opinions:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/security/ topic4054.html#d06jan2011

ME


On Jan 14, 2011, at 11:08 AM, Randy Green wrote:

I have this nagging suspicion that the anti-virus companies actually manufacture these viruses to create a market for themselves.

Makes perfect sense to me...

Randy

On Jan 14, 2011, at 10:26 AM, Harvey Bergman wrote:


Hello.
I use a Mac and have never owned any anti virus software.
Recently I became suspicious that my Mac might be infected with a virus. I purchased Norton for Macs, discovered I did have a virus and removed it.
Apparently it CAN happen to a Mac!
I am alerting the few emails I contacted after the infection.
If you have anti virus software you should have no problems.
If you use a PC, this was designed for a Mac. (Mac only is the presumption). If you use a Mac, and have no anti virus software, perhaps you could download a free trial from Norton or McAfee, etc, to check for infections.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
Harvey,


Michael Elenko
Eye In The Triangle Photography
206-226-3315







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