Apple Macs now seen as a 'soft target' for spreading viruses

Scare story.
UK Daily Newspaper:


Apple Macs now seen as a 'soft target' for spreading viruses | Mail Online

I would hope Apple may just be on top of this.

Well obviously. Im not surprised they have started to "aim" at it now.

This article is stupid.

The Apple computers don't use anti-virus protection software

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they forgot to add "By default" - of course you can run AV on a Mac, it's just there is no point yet.

Have you ever installed Windows? That doesnt come with AV either!! Should we panic now? No, you go download AVG or Norton, or whatever.

The key difference between the OSX and Windows is that on the latter programs can install with no intervention of the user.

As you may have seen with the recent MacDefender trojan flying around, you need to enter a password for it to install. Don't enter your password, problem solved.

Common sense computing prevails over malware.

robduckyworth said:

As you may have seen with the recent MacDefender trojan flying around, you need to enter a password for it to install. Don't enter your password, problem solved.

Common sense computing prevails over malware.

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Let's be realistic here.

Given the number of people infected by MacDefender, even here on this very forum, having to enter your password is hardly a deterrent since most casual users will enter their password when prompted.

So common sense doesn't usually prevail.

robduckyworth said:

Well obviously. Im not surprised they have started to "aim" at it now.

This article is stupid.

.

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I've yet to meet a journalist, apart from Sports and Finance, ( and of course the specialist Mac mags) who actually know what they are talking about.

schweb said:

Let's be realistic here.

Given the number of people infected by MacDefender, even here on this very forum, having to enter your password is hardly a deterrent since most casual users will enter their password when prompted.

So common sense doesn't usually prevail.

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very true Schweb, newbies to the platform and casual users might be convinced to do this.

But if Apple released a statement saying "uncheck 'open safe files after downloading' in Safari" and "Dont enter your password for Mac Defender" I believe even the Switchers would start to get the message.

We as a community have started this, but if the Apple take a front seat, we would see a huge decline in infections.

All the Daily Mail are doing in this article is Scaring people from the platform unneccassarily, with false information such as I stated above. i suppose you could call them "White Lies" at a push.

robduckyworth said:

very true Schweb, newbies to the platform and casual users might be convinced to do this.

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And statistically, those groups make up 90% of the platform.

But if Apple released a statement saying "uncheck 'open safe files after downloading' in Safari" and "Dont enter your password for Mac Defender" I believe even the Switchers would start to get the message.

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Until the next one, but as I've stated before, I doubt even that Safari preference would prevent this. People just don't take much precaution on the Mac because they're told they don't have to do so.

We as a community have started this, but if the Apple take a front seat, we would see a huge decline in infections.

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Unfortunately, I"ll disagree with you here. IMHO, a majority of our regulars, for as great as they are with most questions, fail when it comes to properly answering the virus question when new users ask it. It's quite honestly one of my biggest pet peeves for any type of answer given here at MF. The "no viruses lolzoaorror@@!!!" answer that is usually the stock answer to the question is a failure when it comes to truthfully answering the question. We haven't started anything here, we could be doing much better to help new users understand the threats that actually exist.