AV software still being actively promoted

Funny you should say that. I just threatened to post an absolutely fabulous picture of myself on one of my fellow worker's desktop with a message saying, "No more internet for you...bad bad bad!" I won't tell you what brought that about.....

Lisa

Lisa, I used to be the IT support for my late Father-in-Law. He was totally unable NOT to click on anything that said, "Free." He called me one day, said his computer wasn't working well. I went over there armed with my best antivirus tools (This was in the days when I used Windows). He had over 7000 virus instances! And as fast as I wiped them out, they came right back. I ended up taking the thing back to my house where I could isolate it and use more creative ways to attack it. Eventually I had to solicit help from a website that offered free technical advice on viruses. When I sent them the list of viruses they were aghast at it all and thought i ought to just nuke and pave it. But he had genealogy research from years of work and a mailing list for his old Army unit from WW II and we needed/wanted to preserve them. So I ended up putting them on a separate external drive with nothing else on it, then detaching it from the system, nuking and paving the machine, installing fresh A/V software on it, then reattaching the external and turning the AV loose on the files there. Eventually it was all cleaned up. When I returned it to him, I had attached a large sign on the top of it that said, "TANSTAAFL," which was taken from a Robert Heinlein book and stood for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." It didn't help, he still clicked on everything that offered him Free anything...but the A/V caught things for me. He'd call to complain that the A/V wouldn't let him get to the Free stuff and I would just listen and at the end say, "Good."

As much as it can be a pain to learn to use, the No-Script plugin works wonders for keeping bad code at bay. It just takes some patience to develop the awareness of what to allow and what to not allow. And as it's been mentioned here, Ad-Block Plus is another great product. The two of them together pretty much make surfing safe. There's still the threat of infected email attachments, but usually infections from those are instances of "you can't fix stupid."

Today I received the MacForums Newsletter email and had a read of the headline topic "New report on OS X anti-malware apps." It's good reading for anyone interested in online security found here for those who dont receive the News Letter http://www.mac-forums.com/blog/new-...m=email&elq2=5e1a0c936af34b1bab5ede62a237d9e7
I was interested in "KeRanger, a ransomware Trojan that infected thousands of Macs earlier this year" and it occurred to me that given our location and isolation I should at least look at the packages on offer; http://www.av-comparatives.org/mac-security-review-test-2016/
I have to say that despite my disappointment in Malwarebytes declining to be a part of the evaluation the packages on offer looked pretty good (including the free ones). In the past I have always opted for an app that can be run episodically for these purposes rather than one that operates constantly in the background but maybe those days are gone. The article includes good suggestions for safe browsing too, such as not using an Admin account for day to day use but that is a little complex for my wife who just likes everything to work. After reading the evaluations I was particularly interested in Sophos because it allows security management of up to five other computers (includes PC's) from one Home Dashboard. I am downloading it at the moment and if anyone is interested I will report back on it's success (or not).

Beware of some issues with Sophos on Macs. We run Sophos enterprise here at the university and I run Sophos Home for my personal machines. In both versions on Macs, some legit sites won't work even if you add them as exceptions. Two that I know of are radar.weather.gov's full CONUS loop and testmy.net (an internet speed checker).

By the way, I think (bearing in mind that this is a cross platform app) we are going to have to get over the use of the word Virus as it applies to Mac OS. It seems plain that the industry has decided it's an umbrella term and thats what (despite it being literally incorrect) we have to call it.

Rod,

Just remember that you may have to disable it/turn it off before any Apple software updates. There are numerous accounts of Sophos (and others) stopping, or worse, corrupting updates because they usually involve changes at system level - which Sophos sees as a threat.

Ian

Thanks Ian, that's valuable advice. I will just monitor it for now and see what happens. Have the developers of Sophos commented on any of this?

I got an email notification from M Six on this topic but it doesn't appear here. I wonder why? OOps, just found it. Thanks for the info on blocked sites, I will keep an eye out for that too.

Naturally the software developers will start calling everything a 'virus' Rod. More sales equals more bucks and if we can scare or turn some of those old Mac users into the cash drawer so much the better.

Sophos hit on some "malware" tonight. It was the installer file for FileZilla. Only been sitting there on my hard drive for months.

I agree to an extent Harry, but the wording of the evaluations does make it clear that we are talking about Malware protection for the Mac not Virus protection. Are you saying that the developers should change their wording on Mac versions of their cross platform products to read "malware"eg. "Automatic Malware protection Is On"? Cause I don't think thats going to happen.;D

Here's synchronicity for you, I got this popup just now as I was reading this thread;



And the report;

LOL, it's Windows junk Rod. Sophos, like other AV software is going to find all the Windows nasties. Hey, it's up to you to run whatever you like on your machine but I still contend that Malwarebytes is all you need.

greyzland said:

Macworld now is so desperate that I will be reading a news from a site and all of a sudden Macworld pop up will grab that site and freeze my screen and no matter what I do i can not move except to turn off my MBP.... the only option Macworld gives me is to accept to download and test what they offer.... I have to get out of what I am reading by turning off my MBP coz I don't want to be coerced by this company into submission into what they want...what a PITA.....

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I mean MacKeeper.....it has kept me hostage.......

chscag said:

LOL, it's Windows junk Rod. Sophos, like other AV software is going to find all the Windows nasties. Hey, it's up to you to run whatever you like on your machine but I still contend that Malwarebytes is all you need.

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Unfortunately it's not just me I'm worried about.

It's important to realize that AV software gives extremely self-serving "malware" alerts. In other words, the products tend to do what they can to scare you, rather than assuage your fears and educate you.

So, for instance, if your AV software comes across a bit of Windows malware that you received as a file attachment to an e-mail message, it generally won't tell you that the "malware" that it found can't run on a Macintosh and is entirely benign.

Another problem is that many commercial AV products don't look for adware at all. Of if they do, they report it as being equivalent to malware. However, even though adware can be extremely annoying, it is in no way malicious or harmful to your data.

Malwarebytes (free)
https://www.malwarebytes.com/antimalware/mac/
does a really good job of detecting and eliminating adware. And it's nice to have because it's free. But I don't think that it looks for any actual malware, even extinct malware, at all. The program runs too quickly to do a thorough scan for malware, and it's too small to contain the necessary malware definitions.

If you want a comprehensive anti-virus program (and I don't think that most Mac users need one), and you want a free one, you may want to check out:

avira (free)
http://www.avira.com/en/free-antivirus-mac
It did pretty well in the last AV comparison test that I find believable:
http://www.thesafemac.com/mac-anti-virus-testing-2014/
I haven't tried it myself.

I can't recommend Avast, because it installs adware.

Usually, for those who insist that they need anti-virus software, I recommend:

Intego's VirusBarrier
VirusBarrier wins all the believable anti-virus program comparison tests (there are lots of shill sites on the Web)
It is currently only $40 and I think that it is worth the money to have the best product if you feel that you need one:
http://www.intego.com/antivirus-internet-security-x8

Rod Sprague said:

By the way, I think (bearing in mind that this is a cross platform app) we are going to have to get over the use of the word Virus as it applies to Mac OS. It seems plain that the industry has decided it's an umbrella term and thats what (despite it being literally incorrect) we have to call it. View attachment 24803

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That is a huge problem, both in the industry and the user community. It's a particular problem here in the Mac community, because we have a tendency to trot out the old "there are no viruses for Macs!" line whenever someone brings up the concern.

I see "Malware" misused often as well. Malware literally means "Malicious Software", so it's a broad umbrella term which encompasses "virus", "adware", "spyware", "trojan" and every other nasty piece of code that exists. And yet, so often I see people here say things like "there's only malware on Macs, no viruses". This is a misleading statement.

I wish the industry would stop making a distinction altogether. They should change their products to be called "Anti-Malware", rather than "Anti-Virus". I guess they use that term simply because it's more recognizable than "malware", since it's been around longer. Unfortunately, it just further propagates the misunderstanding.

A true "virus" in the wild is a rarity even on Windows today. Most of what afflicts us, both Windows and Mac users, is one of the many other varieties of malware.

cwa107, what virus affects Macs today? Not an app that requires user approval to install, not malware, but a true virus that can install itself with no authorizing action from the user and which can replicate to other Macs in the network or through electronic contact and install itself there with no user interaction. You made the bold statement that,

I see people here say things like "there's only malware on Macs, no viruses". Absolutely untrue.

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So what virus affects and infects Macs today?

MacInWin said:

cwa107, what virus affects Macs today? Not an app that requires user approval to install, not malware, but a true virus that can install itself with no authorizing action from the user and which can replicate to other Macs in the network or through electronic contact and install itself there with no user interaction. You made the bold statement that, So what virus affects and infects Macs today?

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Misleading, not "untrue". You are correct, I've edited my post.