is it silly to virus/spyware scan OSX?

[cherry]

So just for the heck of it i decided, since i've had my mac book pro a year now, to do a little virus/spyware scan. I called upon good old trendmicro HouseCall, which claims to be compatable with OSX and firefox.

I have tried initiating a scan in OSX avec firefox, yet the scan has repeatedly failed to begin. The first page (the one that is displayed while the site scans to see what browser and os you're running) reads that the scan might take "a few seconds" before the application loads. I wait and wait and it's stuck in this phase for 15 minutes before i finally kill it.

My question is, should i be testing the windows side only? Is it pointless to scan OSX?
And, if it's not pointless, how do i get HouseCall to run in OSX? Thx.

 

[macbookmaster]

im not shure how to make house call work but there are some killer virus scanning applications out there that are free or opensource so they always get better... it is always a good idea to virus scan.... even on a mac... there are virtually no viruses out there for macs but hey... we mac owners are a growing population so the viruses increase with us..... i have had my mac for the same length you have had urs... no viruses but scan it once a month just to mac sure. Peace and contact me on my AIM: macbookmaster

 

[cherry]

Thanx, i actually switched to the windows partition and did a scan there after i posted this...8 grayware/spyware and 130 vulnerabilities showed up. No viruses though. The spyware threat is enough to keep me scanning though.

Can you recommend any free scanners that would work in OSX?

 

[cwa107]

Thanx, i actually switched to the windows partition and did a scan there after i posted this...8 grayware/spyware and 130 vulnerabilities showed up. No viruses though. The spyware threat is enough to keep me scanning though.

Can you recommend any free scanners that would work in OSX?

Here's the thing - when you run something like Housecall on your computer, it searches for known viruses. The problem is that there are no known viruses for OS X. So, running a dedicated virus scanner is pretty much pointless because it's essentially looking for nothing

 

[macbookmaster]

no there is one scanner that i used that scanned OSX... before you do a scan it updates the viruses it knows via updating and it actualluy aorks...... mine knows of like 144,000 or so... not many but they are still a threat.... click the link to go to the page for downloading the scanner, its called ClamXav http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/ClamXav.shtml this is a download link... this scanner is a good one and you can have it scan induvidual folders or bigger... i dont think it lets u scan the whole Hd =( but you can choose to scan a ton of folders and all your apps and stuff..... hope i helped......... contact me on my AIM: macbookmaster i have lots of freeware that could help with future problems and stuff.. or just for fun.