On 02/03/2009, at 2:42 PM, Daniel Forsdyke wrote:
Hi Glenn
The general view is that you do not 'need' an antivirus program on
the mac, but it is probably wise to start looking at one as the
popularity of the Mac increases.
There are a couple of free apps:
iAntivirus for Mac
ClamXav
I currently use ClamXav, but iAntivirus seems to be getting some
reasonable reviews.
The only significant threat I have heard about recently was a trogan
contained in a pirate download of iWorks 09!
Regards
Daniel Forsdyke
On 02/03/2009, at 14:30, Glenn Walker <wal...@amnet.net.au> wrote:
Hi All do i need a antivirus for mac.
And I certainly wouldn't go spending money on one at this stage. There
is an often-expressed idea that we Mac users should somehow "protect"
their Windows-using colleagues from themselves by installing anti-
virus software on our computers. I have several reactions to this, the
most immediate being that they should already be running anti-virus
software themselves anyway: if they're not then there's not much I can
do to help them.
The next is that most virus infections are contracted through personal
behaviour: opening attachments in email, clicking unknown links in
emails, visiting dubious sites on the Internet, downloading files of
unknown or dubious origin (did someone say Limewire? No, sorry...that
was iWork 09), failing to keep up to date with System Updates, etc.
These rules are just as valuable to Mac users as Wndows users, and are
a much more effective protection against the "potential threat" of Mac
OS X viruses (which still don't exist in any meaningful way) than
running some pointless bloatware which simply consumes processor
cycles for no good reason.
A classic example: a client called me, wanting to know why an
"important" attachment she was trying to download was not working
properly. It must have been important, since it was attached to a
message telling her that a package was waiting for her to pick up.
Despite the fact that the message contained no other information
(Company name, contact name, Consignment Note number, or anything else
that might serve as identifying material) she was nevertheless
determined to see what this "valuable" package might be. Luckily, she
was running a Mac, so the nasty little program she had downloaded
about a dozen times by now was powerless to do anything to her
computer, or more importantly, the rest of the network. On a Windows
network it would have been a disaster waiting to happen.
It's easy to say that one day someone will figure out how to get this
stuff to work on a Mac. It's also just as easy to say they won't, but
Mac OS X has been around now for nearly ten years, with never much
more than a vague hint cropping up every six months or so that a virus
has finally been written for the Mac. These announcements have never
amounted to anything significant, and with the future release of Snow
Leopard and beyond, seem less and less likely to do so.
--
Peter Hinchliffe Apwin Computer Services
FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer
Perth, Western Australia
Phone (618) 9332 6482 Fax (618) 9332 0913
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