For those who automatically dismiss anti-virus news or claims of increasing malware, can you explain to me why you do especially given the very basic fact that OS X is in no way some exception to the normal rules of OS design? I'm genuinely curious to know what the root of automatic dismissal is.
You asked Van, and my reasoning is I don't go to sites that may affect me, I don't open emails I'm not sure about, and I don't put in my Admin password if I'm not 110% sure why my machine is asking for it.
On top of that, I have Little Snitch running, and I know exactly whats coming into my machine. Does this make me complacent ? Yes. Does it make me feel threatened ? No. Do I feel safe ? Yes. Why ? Because I believe I know enough about whats going on with my OS, to know when something is up, and not right. I know of friends (running Windows) that have excellent Internet mind set, and they have had maybe 2 or 3 pieces of malware that has effected them.
Its all about discipline IMHO, and if you can get that down pat, then you should be safe enough from the 'baddies'.
I was trying to hack at this tendency for some to just wait for viruses to come and then deal with it instead of being informed users who do what they can to avoid it in the first place.
How can 1 be informed about something when there is nothing there to be informed about. Isn't that counter productive ??
Again, OS X ships with Anti Virus pre-installed. Any third party AV product is merely augmenting what is already there. Just because it isn't in your face, doesn't mean your system isn't protected. As usual, Apple,has it covered in a simple, elegant way.
And this is one good reason to download the Apps you want from the Mac App Store, being Sandboxed, makes it quite difficult to get into and wreak havoc.
As much as I think its a good idea, it really restricts some Apps, namely | Text Expander | Coda 2 | BBEdit from allowing some great features.
In Safari, I really think they should take the Option away from "Open 'safe' files after downloading" which would give you another level of security.
When Windows started meeting the Internet, security was suddenly a requirement and it was grafted on, rather than built in, and it showed. NT was the first “secure” Windows and it was a nightmare to try to make secure.
Im reading a short book of 46pages on iBook from the iBooks Store called the
Billy Gates Affair - How Hackers at Microsoft and Google Revealed Their Massive Malware Operation, which I believe EVERYONE here should read, and IF its got even a little truth to it, then after reading this book, you can understand, WHY its so easy to be able to make virus/malware/and so on, for the Windows Operating System. If there are those holes in the system, for the hackers to easily enough get in there, then you can understand why, it would be easy enough, to circumvent those holes and drop so bad stuff onto your computer.
Honestly, after reading the book, it scared me, and I promise myself, until the day I die, I WILL NOT own a Windows computer for my everyday computing needs. Ever !!!!