thinking about switching

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chance

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Although I have a ton of questions about macs, I will stick to this one for now.
I am a pc user but I have always been drawn to the mac. I have read up on this forum and saw how everyone said that you will not get spyware/adware. So I jumped in the nearest apple store and took a look at their computers. One was connected to the net so I went to take a look at it. Now I will give you some background. In my first years as a pc user, I have gotten my share of viruses, spyware, and adware. Now I understand that you all do not get viruses and I understand that. But when I tried to access the mac that was on the internet I found that it was plagued with some sort of adware. The screen was that smily central thing(to download emoticons). I could not surf due to the pop-ups. Now that is probably the fault of the user right? Is the mac still prone to adware or spyware? Or is it the users fault for downloading a program. If the user had not downloaded the adware, that wouldn't have happened right? I am and will always be a computer noob, so if this is a dumb question and stupid post I apologize.

chance
 
Padawan

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chance said:
Although I have a ton of questions about macs, I will stick to this one for now.
I am a pc user but I have always been drawn to the mac. I have read up on this forum and saw how everyone said that you will not get spyware/adware. So I jumped in the nearest apple store and took a look at their computers. One was connected to the net so I went to take a look at it. Now I will give you some background. In my first years as a pc user, I have gotten my share of viruses, spyware, and adware. Now I understand that you all do not get viruses and I understand that. But when I tried to access the mac that was on the internet I found that it was plagued with some sort of adware. The screen was that smily central thing(to download emoticons). I could not surf due to the pop-ups. Now that is probably the fault of the user right? Is the mac still prone to adware or spyware? Or is it the users fault for downloading a program. If the user had not downloaded the adware, that wouldn't have happened right? I am and will always be a computer noob, so if this is a dumb question and stupid post I apologize.

chance
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Pop-ups aren't necessarily due to adware. They can be generated by the sites you navigate to as well. Mac's are not prone to adware or spyware, and I've never had a problem with it. Safari (and other Mac browsers) also have pop-up blockers to prevent that sort of problem. I personally have mine turned off, and still don't have an issues.
 
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chance

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The reason why I thought it was adware is that it showed the same signs that my pc was showing when mine was infected. thanks for the quick reply.
 
Aptmunich

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As far as I know there is no adware that will run on a mac, so what you were experiencing must have just been a rogue site. Make sure you use a pop-up blocker and you'll be fine...

The one built into safari works great!
 
walkerj

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After having my Mac now for a week after switching from Linux and trying Safari, Camino, and now staying with Firefox I can say that I've had about as much adware, spyware, and popups as I had with Linux: Zero. Well, actually the ad people are getting more crafty about getting around Firefox (and others) pop-up blocker very recently, but that isn't the Mac's fault (same crafty sites that get around the blocker on my Mac get around it on my Linux machine at work as well as my windows machines.)

Popups are merely annoying. The big bugaboos are the spyware, trojans, and adware that get into the Windows machines simply by visiting a site. That doesn't happen with a Mac, and if anything tried to install it would ask you for the admin password ("please assist me in infecting your computer") so I wouldn't worry about all of those.
 

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