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Anti Virus for Mac


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Virus protection is a good idea in terms of the whole internet ecosystem. Macs may not have a working virus to speak of (yet) but, one, that doesn't mean they won't and, two, it doesn't mean they can't pass them on.

My advice would be to try out an application called ClamAV (or ClamXav for Mac OS X):

http://www.clamxav.com/

Apple actually uses it in its own mail server software. The beauty of it is that it's open source so you have a whole army of people updating their virus definition library (often much faster than any for-profit company). The only downside I've heard of is that it can run a little slow when scanning, but I've never used it regularly and haven't tried it for quite some time so it might be quite a bit faster these days.

On yeah, and it's free, being Free Software and all.

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Have you or anyone you know ever had a virus in OSX?

I have a very bad flu right now, despite the Mac OS X.

Computer viruses on the Mac? Well, there was something going around in the early 1990s, I think. Oh yeah, and then there was this Word macro virus maybe 8 or 10 years ago.

Of course the anti-virus software companies would like us to believe otherwise, but in reality at the moment there is no need to have protection agains non-existing & undetected viruses.

The software can't protect you against something it does not know about. When a virus is discovered and detected, then go shopping. Whatever you buy today is not going to be of any help; OK, it MAY be a tad faster to get the new virus definitions (like the #1) downloaded, but what if the firm you have chosen is slow to respond?

At present, selling anti-virus software for Mac OS X is a hoax. Having said that, if no-one would buy it, the companies would not develop such software at all and response times would be considerable.

And having said THAT: no-one seems to have described a mechanism that would install software on a Mac without the explicit approval of the user. I have to go through several steps and remember admin user names and their passwords to do some of the simplest things on my Macs, not to even speak about the complexities of software installation.

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