Anti Virus

Any recommendations on a good anti virus program for my Mac. My internet provider suggested I run a virus check. I have been getting emails from myself and I'm told someone has hacked in and has my email password.

1) You don't need an Anti-virus software, 2) Your only e-mail account might have been hacked, that's easy to do if you had a simple password. This in no way means that your Mac was compromised, they don't go hand in hand.

And spammers are getting very smart about sending out emails in ways that can fool the spam filters, this is nothing new..

So first go to whatever e-mail service you use and change the password to a secure one. If they offer two-pass authentication like GMail, then enable that as well.

If you can't remember strong passwords, then employ a password manager like 1Password or the freely available KeePassX to manage it for you.

mreese88 said:

Any recommendations on a good anti virus program for my Mac. My internet provider suggested I run a virus check. I have been getting emails from myself and I'm told someone has hacked in and has my email password.

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What version of OS X are you running? If you are running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or later, then AV software is largely pointless. There is very little malware for OS X, and Apple has built-in protection (known as XProtect) that they update automatically in the background as needed. I am of the opinion that it's a good idea to have 3rd party AV software available to run once in a while as a "second opinion", and ClamXav is good enough for that. Just don't use the Sentry option... that keeps it running all the time and just isn't necessary.

That all said, if someone has hacked your email password, they wouldn't need to have done so by hacking your Mac first. If you have "weak" passwords, or re-use the same password, then they could have guessed it or re-used it after discovering log-on credentials you use on any of the hundreds of websites that have been hacked over the past years. I assume you have changed your email password by now? Also, they may not actually have your email password, but forging emails claiming to be you. A lot of Windows malware does that exactly.... they mine the address book on a compromised Windows PC and fake emails from the people in those lists. In other words, you may have an acquaintance whose Windows PC is infected and it is pretending to be you because your acquaintance has your name/address in his contacts.

I'm running 10.6.8 on a Mac Mini. I do have "iAntiVirus" that I run occasionally.

I've never been too concerned with antivirus programs and have never had any problems that I am aware of. I go back to Apple II+ and Apple Lisa.

Thanks,

Mike

mreese88 said:

My internet provider suggested I run a virus check.

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Of course your ISP would recommend this. 90% of the folks they deal with are Windows users...and many of these folks that the ISP speaks with probably do have a virus. The ISP is just giving you "generic" advice they give everyone (regardless of platform).

The ISP most likely doesn't know anything about Mac's...so they will not have any "Mac Specific" advice.

If you think that your password has been compromised...CHANGE IT!!!

- Nick

mreese88 said:

I'm running 10.6.8 on a Mac Mini. I do have "iAntiVirus" that I run occasionally.

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Are you running the "old" version of iAntivirus by PC Tools or the newer version since it was bought out by Symantec? PC Tools hadn't updated the malware signatures for iAntivirus in a few years. Symantec bought it out last year and should be more current.