Official antivirus, malware, and firewall FAQ

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Not really Vittorio. This has been a flawed arguement for over ten years since OS X came out. The Unix system is the secret. It will be major world headlines if a virus ever hits OS X blieve you me.

Malware for sure viruses no.
 
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Not really Vittorio. This has been a flawed arguement for over ten years since OS X came out. The Unix system is the secret. It will be major world headlines if a virus ever hits OS X believe you me.

Malware for sure viruses no.
 
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I have "Malwarebytes for MAC" installed and my MacBook Pro and performs well, when I run it. It is FREE. :D

Malwarebytes, I'm sure, is a tremendous product for taking care of adware, because it subsumed the excellent product Adware Medic. (A product that only looked for adware. It didn't look for any malware whatsoever.)

However, even though Malwarebyte's Web site pays some lip service to dealing with "malware" for the Macintosh, I have strong doubts that it looks for much malware at all. For two reasons.

First, the company doesn't say, what, if any, malware that the product looks for.

Second, the product does a scan, even on a huge hard drive, that is done in seconds. No genuine anti-virus software for the Macintosh is nearly that fast when doing a full search. I can only assume that's because a through search for everything that might be present simply requires some time. Malwarebytes doesn't do such a search.

It's nice that Malwarebytes is free, and it's nice that it is a great anti-adware product. But I wouldn't put any faith at all in it doing anything for actual malware.
 
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...we are soon going to see more of this rubbish finds its way onto the Mac.

People (mostly Windows bigots) have been saying that OS X will be imminently swamped with malware ...for over 13 years (since OS X was released).

Here are a few entertaining articles about that:

Wolf!
Daring Fireball: Wolf!

Broken Windows
Daring Fireball: Broken Windows

So Witty (followup to Broken Windows)
Daring Fireball: So Witty



At present i am using Eset AV for mac as it doesn't seem to slow it down when i run a full scan, and it has protected me against a website that was trying to push something onto my Mac.

OS X has it's own built-in anti-virus software (that Apple is very quiet about, probably to keep the bad guys from focusing on it):

XProtect/File Quarantine
Gatekeeper (macOS) - Wikipedia
Safely open apps on your Mac

However, if you really feel that that you want third party AV software (and in most cases I don't think that Macs users need it), I recommend getting the best program on the market, especially since you can it for a very reasonable price. VirusBarrier has won just about all of the believable comparison tests, it comes from a company that only makes Mac software (that is, it isn't a poorly done port of a Windows program from a company that doesn't understand the Macintosh), it has been around for well over a decade, and it rarely causes annoying side effects:
 

pigoo3

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Second, the product does a scan, even on a huge hard drive, that is done in seconds. No genuine anti-virus software for the Macintosh is nearly that fast when doing a full search. I can only assume that's because a through search for everything that might be present simply requires some time. Malwarebytes doesn't do such a search.

Definitely an interesting observation…large storage devices certainly would take a long time to scan throughly. I'm going to guess that Malwarebytes probably only scans certain file types…probably with the OS directories. This would speed things up greatly…and certainly wouldn't be a 100% scan of the storage device.

- Nick
 
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Also, I suspect Malwarebytes only scans for the same Adware that AdwareMedic did, so the scan is limited to the locations where Safari, etc, can and do put things. It seems to be just about as fast as it was when it was called AdwareMedic.
 
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Does "Malwarebytes for Mac," have to scan the full MAC HD to seek adware, trojans...etc? MAC HD set-up different than a DELL or HP PC HD with Windows set-up?

When I installed Malwarebtyes for Mac, the other day, it took their published 6 seconds, and found 4 things for me to remove. I don't have any anti-virus installed and running on my MAC. I do think that I will run Malwarebytes every so often. Perhaps it is so fast as only needs to look at a couple files the way Mac HD is designed for storage?

On our two Windows PC's, I run Malwarbytes periodically, and does seem to have to scan the whole HD with time.
 

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On our two Windows PC's, I run Malwarbytes periodically, and does seem to have to scan the whole HD with time.

How long does a scan generally take on your Windows PC's with Malwarebytes? And what size HD do you have on these Windows PC's?

- Nick
 
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How long does a scan generally take on your Windows PC's with Malwarebytes? And what size HD do you have on these Windows PC's?- Nick

7 year old Asus, i5, [wife's], 15" with WIN 10, 500GB HD, takes about 15 minutes. My one year old Dell 15", i5, Touch Screen, 500GB, 5400RPM, takes about 15-20 minutes. I do have a 3rd, Toshiba Satellite, 11" touch screen, w Win 10, but never paid any attention to the time element. These 3 PC's do have Webroot Antivirus installed.

When we travel, I take the Dell and Toshiba with WIN 10. The Toshiba is used weekly at the YWCA.
 

pigoo3

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7 year old Asus, i5, [wife's], 15" with WIN 10, 500GB HD, takes about 15 minutes. My one year old Dell 15", i5, Touch Screen, 500GB, 5400RPM, takes about 15-20 minutes.

Thanks for the info. 15-20 minutes is a lot longer than the 6 seconds it took Malwarebytes to scan my MacBook Pro (320gig HD).

When the scan takes 15-20 minutes…psychologically…it makes a user feel like something is REALLY being scanned. When it only takes 6 seconds…it's fast…but leaves you wondering!;)

- Nick
 
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Jake on occasions using the Scan function, I have seen MBFM update the search base so they do keep it up to date. And MBFM is AdwareMedic under another name since they purchased AdwareMedic.
 
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