virus protection/scanning

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martians8mymac


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Howdy... while i am aware that i am unlikely to need antiviral software for my imac per se (anytime soon at least), i have a pc laptop that i use quite a lot as well. i have several thumb drives that i tote around for business and i discovered a nasty trojan tucked away on one of those.

i'd like to be able to plug the thumb drives into my imac to check them before letting them anywhere near my PC. You know, with the mac being immune and all.

Is there a good program out there for scanning for viruses that would work on my mac? I've read on CNET that a lot of these cause more problems than solve/prevent. I don't want to scan my mac drive though, just the thumb drives so I can rest easier when I plug them into my PC.

any ideas?

thanks :)
 
cwa107

cwa107


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martians8mymac said:
Howdy... while i am aware that i am unlikely to need antiviral software for my imac per se (anytime soon at least), i have a pc laptop that i use quite a lot as well. i have several thumb drives that i tote around for business and i discovered a nasty trojan tucked away on one of those.

i'd like to be able to plug the thumb drives into my imac to check them before letting them anywhere near my PC. You know, with the mac being immune and all.

Is there a good program out there for scanning for viruses that would work on my mac? I've read on CNET that a lot of these cause more problems than solve/prevent. I don't want to scan my mac drive though, just the thumb drives so I can rest easier when I plug them into my PC.

any ideas?

thanks :)
Click to expand...

You could scan them with ClamXAV. But given a decent AV product for your Windows machine(s), it shouldn't be necessary. Keep in mind that trojans are not self-propagating. So you wouldn't be infected just by plugging the drive in - you'd have to execute the program willfully.
 
harryb2448

harryb2448


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And a decent AV for your PC is Microsoft Security Essentials. It is a free program scanning for viruses and malware and easy to update.
 
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martians8mymac


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Thanks! I have AVG on the PC but the place I picked up this little gem of a virus from has had SO much trouble trying to get it cleaned up. I really can't afford to have my machines go down for something like that.

I was worried that maybe plugging it in would trigger some kind of script. I hand-code web pages but I know nothing about actual programming.

thanks for responding :)
 

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