The Official Mac AntiVirus and Firewall FAQ

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I find Anti-Virus for mac a pointless scam.

If your careful, you don't even need anti-virus for PC.

It's all marketing to paranoia.

True. If you secure a user name for net surfing, with pretty powerful restrictions, keep everything up to date, and lock down scripts, you can prevent infection even on a pc for the most part. You need to restrict scripts and program installation to administrator only. But even then there are still a few things that can happen, however unlikely.

The most common mistake on a pc is that most people do everything under an admin level user profile. Most windows users have no understanding of this concept whatsoever. Locking everything down on the user name you do surfing on is the best strategy. Then of course things can't install without an admin password.

Given the same level of precaution on a mac, you are fort knox safe.
 
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if i turn my firewall on, what settings should i use? and will it prevent me from using filesharing programs?
 
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Heya,

Are there any official thoughts about this from Apple developers?

Are there much down sides of having an AV anyways?
As long as it does not slow down your Mac, it sounds good to me,
I don't want to affect other pc's in my network at home, they will kick me so not a good thing to do :p

But, because all pc's nowadays have their AV, why should the mac users bother to get one?

I will probably get one (don't see the bad sides of having one, only brings extra security), when it slows down my iMac, I will rip it off right away
 
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Virus

as mac user's how would we be able to less effect our friendly pc's.
is there a way to cleaning out those viruses that are stored in our drives? do I even make sense?
 
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The free ClamXav for Mac will search for and quarantine files with Windows viruses, leaving the files' ultimate fate up to you (if I recall correctly).
 
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The firewall on your router & Zone Alarm could be seen as overkill, as would your routers firewall & the Mac Firewall. If your PC appears silent on the web, nobody will attack you. By silent I mean that it does not respond to anything.

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Run that, and if you pass your fine.

EDIT: Choose 'All Service Ports' on that test.


Well I did that and my port 80 failed the test. How would I go about fixing this? As it says this particular port is open. It got a red square in the test.
 

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Is this on your Mac or a PC?
 
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The white imac I have in the specs under my avatar.
 
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I'm going to toss in my .2 cents, and run.

There has never been, nor is there now, a known virus for Mac. Period. End of story.

If you need peace of mind, Little Snitch is a good cheap (cost, not quality) program. If you want total protection against everything I have read asked here (again, for nothing more than piece of mind), you want Intego NetBarrier and other software programs made by them. They are considered to be one of the best software developer's regarding paranoid Mac user's. MacWorld Magazine rav's about this company, their products, and their etiquette.

It boggles my mind I have actually found Mac user's here utilizing Norton products. I'm not going to debate anyone.

As for other's, if you feel you need protection, stay away from Norton (and McAfee)!
 
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It boggles my mind I have actually found Mac user's here utilizing Norton products.
As for other's, if you feel you need protection, stay away from Norton (and McAfee)!

I agree, Norton is a total resource hog and is absolutely worthless both for Mac and PC. AVG Free edition is a lot better than Norton for PC and I don't run any AV software on my macs. Of course I have never had a virus or any other malware on any PC or Mac I have ever owned. I am just careful in my browsing/email habits and I use a good firewall.;D
 
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I'm going to toss in my .2 cents, and run.

It boggles my mind I have actually found Mac user's here utilizing Norton products. I'm not going to debate anyone.


Amen to that. Both of these products are bloatware. Fills your hd with unnecessary utilities that hook into the system and are **** near impossible to remove completely. Slow and process hungry, not to mention they do not get all the virai that are out there. Norton mises about 24% of virai and McAfee misses about 55%... says it all huh! Just because MS endorse this rubbish does not make it good. If you value your computer avoid these at all costs.
 
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Hey this is just the thread that I was hoping to find. I had a few questions myself but it seems that they've been covered for the most part. Including whether or not Norton really is a resource hog. I found this to be true but I never thought to check if anyone else was having this problem.

So I guess I'm wondering what most of you think is the best software that doesn't seem to hog the system.
 
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I am on windows now but am about to get new computer and am going to mac i do believe. Bone head move to make all programs obsolete from xp to vista, it really tics me off so i am done with them from now on. If this keeps up then we will have to worry about viruses because the market share will increase from the 15% now to whatever tomorrow. hackers will take notice and start writting bugs, or will that be a concern for macs os?
 
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If this keeps up then we will have to worry about viruses because the market share will increase from the 15% now to whatever tomorrow. hackers will take notice and start writting bugs, or will that be a concern for macs os?
Your concern is known as the safety-through-obscurity myth or the market-share myth.

The following are three articles of the pages of results that shatter the myth If you run a web search for

mac myth "market share" virus

David Pogue, writing for the New York Times.
And this one.
And this one.

The third one, though it knocks the notion of virus danger, contains some low-key FUD that is typical of many articles keeping the myth alive. There is one reader response, though, that exposes the story's slant>
Oh come on. Anonymous -- 15/10/07

What a fluff peice this is. The Verizon guys sums it all up when he says there's no Mac viruses replicating in the wild (same goes for linux too). This whole argument is absurd. If two guys go to the same work, take the same bus and contact the same people everyday and one of those guys is constantly sick with colds, flu's, viruses, while the other guy never has a day off sick in his life, who is healthier? The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Run Windows and you WILL eventually be hit by one of the many thousands of viruses out there. Run Mac or Linux and you won't, it's just that simple. And the reason there are so many thousands (yes, think about it THOUSANDS) of times more viruses for Windows than Mac or Linux isn't some stupid market share argument, it's because it's TRIVIAL to break Windows machines but a LOT, LOT harder to break Mac or Linux.
 
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Does anyone know how to turn on the firewall in Leopard? I went into Sharing in System Prefs and could not find an option to turn it on.
 
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Does anyone know how to turn on the firewall in Leopard? I went into Sharing in System Prefs and could not find an option to turn it on.

It's under Security.
 
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Pick the option that does what you want it to do. From Apple's Help menu:

Using the Firewall pane of Security preferences
You can use the personal firewall in Mac OS X to prevent unwanted connections from the Internet or network.

Sharing services are enabled in the firewall when they are turned on in the Sharing preferences. To prevent connections with one of these services you must turn the service off in the Sharing preferences. For more information on sharing, see:

Sharing your computer with others on your network
Here are some ways to set up the firewall:


To allow remote connection of all applications and services to this computer, select “Allow all incoming connections.”


To have your firewall prevent connection of all services and applications, select “Block all incoming connections.”


To alter the default firewall connections for an application or service, select “Limit incoming connections to specific services and applications.” For more information on firewall connections, see:

Setting firewall access for services and applications

To add an application, click Add (+), choose the application, and then use the up and down arrows to set the limits for the item.


To monitor firewall activity, click Advanced, and the select Enable Firewall Logging.

To view the log of firewall activity, click Open Log.


To prevent your system from revealing its existence to uninvited traffic, click Advanced, and then click “Enable Stealth Mode.”
 
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I'm not sure i'm a switcher, with me it's more the right hand works the mac and left works windows. I like that
stealth info. That's wonderful thanx.

In all fairness vista is icky but it does work xp software. just use compatibility tab and run as xp. that's about the only thing it does right.

I was happy with mac when finally got the dvd drive open.
took me 3 hours. lol this forum is a godsend.
 
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Hello,

Considering the length of this thread, I slightly skimmed through it so I apologize in advance if my questions were already answered.

But considering the date the original post, and now that leopard is out.. how relevant is the original post today?

Meaning has anything changed over the years to make users now consider using antivirus, antispyware programs with an active firewall? If so, are there any freeware programs that are both reliable and not a performance hog?

I just got my first mac and on my windows computer I had: windows defender, Trendmicro AV and firewall, AVG rootkit, and winpatrol.

I know windows is suppose to be more vulnerable to attacks then mac, but I would still like to know what can i do to make sure i'm not that small percentage of people of do get their macs infected.

Thanks in advance for your replies.
 
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