Antivirus

[mdetry]

I am a new switcher to Mac in the last 2 months.
I am extremly happy and I already convinced 2 friends to switch also. I am converting into an Apple evangelist.

Actually I am not using an Antivirus in my Imac, although I have seen that some antivirus softwares exist.

Do you use antivirus? Is is just safe to work without nothing? could you please give advise?

Thanks

 

[dotdotdot]

When I get a Mac mini, I will not buy AntiVirus right away...

After you know how to use Macs well, then get an AntiVirus. There are no viruses, so theres virtually no risk involved.

The reason i say this is because AntiVirus can potentially "ruin" some features - not to a great extent, but that the owner will see slower features, as antivirus guards the entire system...

There are 0 viruses for the Mac, and 0 "smart" trojans... (by smart i mean Trojans that are real file sizes - like someone would have a 1 kb song... or a 5 k Office document)

 

[Blue Velvet]

Try reading this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/107826/

There are loads of threads here about viruses on Macs, far more threads than actual viruses.

Most of us, it seems, don't bother with it... including me.

 

[timnosenzo]

Try reading this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/107826/

There are loads of threads here about viruses on Macs, far more threads than actual viruses.

Most of us, it seems, don't bother with it... including me.

And when she says "loads", she means "LOADS" of threads about anti-virus software!

I installed Virex when I first signed up for .Mac a little over a year ago...but it soaked up resources and seemed pretty unnecessary.

 

[Macaddicttt]

\After you know how to use Macs well, then get an AntiVirus. There are no viruses, so theres virtually no risk involved.

Why would you get AntiVirus if there's no risks at all? It doesn't make sense to get something you don't need at all. It doesn't really matter when. Just don't use AntiVirus. It's unnecessary and takes resources away from other things.

 

[dotdotdot]

Why would you get AntiVirus if there's no risks at all? It doesn't make sense to get something you don't need at all. It doesn't really matter when. Just don't use AntiVirus. It's unnecessary and takes resources away from other things.

IF you want it, I meant that you get if after you are familiar with Macs... if you never really USED one don't get it.

Windows, its the opposite.

 

[tobio]

I have used McAfee 7.5 that comes with the .mac account, but I hear that it can conflict with some things like connecting to network shares. The main reason for me that I don't use it though, is that apart from it starting when the mac starts you have no visual feedback that it is even doing anything.

I now use sophos antivirus (comes from work, apparently because I connect my powerbook to the work network I am licensed to use it.) It has a little shield icon in the menu bar so that I know it is switched on, and once I downloaded some file from a website and it detected a trojan virus in it. It popped up a message along the lines of "we have detected <name of virus>. click here to look up what it does. This virus only effects pcs and has no effect on mac. clean, delete, quarantine" So that's it tested as far as I am concerned.

I would say there is little reason to have antivirus if your mac purely lives at home on a desk. However if it is out and about connecting to different places then I would. People who are funny about macs will have one less reason for you not to connect to their lan. and if someone with a PC knows they have a virus but cant get rid of it, tell them to share their C: drive and you can scan it across the network (drop the mounted drive onto the program's icon)

 

[Peterkro]

Tobio,just to say about Sophos if you need a Antivirus(and most personal users of OSX don't)its a damn good solution not cheap but good(and not a resource hog).

 

[tobio]

I'll vouch for that, I hardly notice its running. It is a shame that Sophos don't appear to offer a "home user" version. At work we use Mcafee on all the PC desktops, centrally updated via epolicy, and Sophos on our NT and Netware servers (and my powerbook) centrally updated with SAVadmin.

For home users though I would still recommend Mcafee for mac. It is affordable and easy to keep updated. I have never used Norton for mac, but my experiences with the PC versions of all their software (ghost excepted) mean i wouldn't want it near my powerbook.

Mcafee is good, Sophos is better,
Mcafee is easily available to the people, Sophos isn't.
Virusses are a problem on PCs, and not on Macs.

 

[yellow]

I think the key thing to look at is how proactive you are. There are no Mac OS X viruses currently. Will that always be the case? I think not. Do you want to be "protected" in case thst happens, or are you willing to gamble a bit and not worry about it until after the fact?