Best Anti Virus software for Mac

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I gather from some of the comments that I can now just Trash AdwareMedic.app and there's no point in running it???

Yup, I don't advise using AdwareMedic any longer. It won't detect much recent stuff - in fact, can't, because of some of the shenanigans some adware companies have been engaging in to prevent detection. (It became an escalating arms race that ultimately necessitated having daemons running as root to prevent adware from preventing detection or disabling the software. Adware on the Mac is the real menace... it's by far the most sophisticated stuff you can get infected with. Mac malware, in comparison, is usually pretty lame.)

Plus, there are vulnerabilities in AdwareMedic that could be used by malicious code to escalate to root privileges. Be glad I'm just directing development, and not writing the code for Malwarebytes for Mac. I suck at writing production-ready code! :laugh
 
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Although the concept of heuristics seems fine, on Windows anti-virus programs I thought that heuristic approach was the main reason for false positives - would that not be a concern with the Mac software as well?

It's a hard battle to win. On the one side, you've got hashes that never throw FPs, but never detect anything new, and that people criticize for that. ("AV can only detect known malware that your system can protect you from!" There are some misperceptions there about how well macOS protects you, but you get the point.)

On the other side, you've got all kinds of heuristic technologies (machine learning, pattern matching, behavior analysis, etc) that throw more frequent FPs, and people are even less tolerant of that (for good reasons).

There's middle ground there, but it's hard to find.

If anything, I think it's more of a concern with Mac AV software. On Windows, everyone recognizes AV as a necessary evil, because the malware problem is so bad. On Mac, we have to do better, because people have a very low threshold for uninstalling AV. Many don't run it at all, because "Macs don't get viruses." ;) If we actually get someone to install some kind of protection, it sucks when that gets screwed up with false positives (FPs).

This is what traditional AV companies don't really get about the Mac.
 
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As per my usual curious nature I downloaded and ran DetectX...it's search parameters appear to be wider than Malwarebytes.

I don't know what MBAM's search parameters are, but I'd imagine that's correct. DetectX was conceived as a troubleshooting tool, so its philosophy is wider than that of just an "anti-malware" tool. Its primary function is actually not the search function but the Profile and History functions, which reveal what's changed since the last time DetectX was run. The idea of being able to browse through previous runs of the app and get a detailed understanding of how the Mac has changed over time - what's been added and what's been removed - is fundamental to figuring out what's causing issues with a poorly-performing Mac.

The search tool is really just an extension of that - an automated way of highlighting changes that DTXS is confident most users are going to want to be aware of. It just happens that since I first developed it back in 2014, most of the trouble affecting Mac users is primarily related to adware and PUPs. It just seemed obvious to add further detections for more serious malware to those, so DTXS sort of evolved into a "security" tool organically as a response to the nature of the trouble that Mac users face.
 
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Yup, I don't advise using AdwareMedic any longer. ... ... ...
Plus, there are vulnerabilities in AdwareMedic that could be used by malicious code to escalate to root privileges. Be glad I'm just directing development, and not writing the code for Malwarebytes for Mac. I suck at writing production-ready code! ...


Thanks for the info.
I hear you regarding writing code, and my youngest son is well into writing high-end code and all I can do is appreciate what he does and it's certainly many miles above my head.





- Patrick
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I'm also running Malwarebytes in the Browser Extensions of Chrome and Firefox. They don't have an extension for Safari. All extensions are in beta. My default browser is Chrome.

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/218616-malwarebytes-browser-extension-for-chrome-beta/

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/218646-malwarebytes-browser-extension-for-firefox-beta/



Thanks for the info and links.

I've installed the extension for Chrome and it's amazing and interesting how many sites it has flagged with a heads-up warning. Several of which I would have thought were quite innocent. ie: some shopping and best price comparison sites.





- Patrick
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krs


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Thanks for the info and links.

I've installed the extension for Chrome and it's amazing and interesting how many sites it has flagged with a heads-up warning. Several of which I would have thought were quite innocent. ie: some shopping and best price comparison sites.

Remember though the Browser Extensions are still in beta, there will be some false positives.

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/forum/243-malwarebytes-for-chrome/

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/forum/242-malwarebytes-for-firefox/
 
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What about Chrome itself?
And thus google and related services.
They collect more private and personal information than just about anybody else
https://medium.com/swlh/what-does-google-know-about-me-or-everyone-899dc6edef47



So what??? Even if they do, they don't have much more information than anybody could find looking in the phone book or directory.

And as for any tracking, I really appreciate that they are currently helping me find a replacement iPhone case for my wife with the various suggestions they may offer. Many offers on sale or discounted. But actually I think most come from amazon, eBay or aliexpress, not google but I appreciate the help and savings regardless.

Did you have something more specific in mind as to what "more private and personal information" google may be collecting, and is any of it if they are actually a bad or harmful thing??

I seem I actually get less intrusion type of stuff using Chrome vs using Safari, and I would probably still be using Safari if it would work for all sites properly, but it became too frustrating so I just switched, and Firefox was actually my first choice, but they made some changes and some things didn't work the way I wanted or as useful.






- Patrick
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- - - Updated - - -

Remember though the Browser Extensions are still in beta, there will be some false positives.


Got it, Thanks.
Quite understandable.





- Patrick
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Did you have something more specific in mind as to what "more private and personal information" google may be collecting, and is any of it if they are actually a bad or harmful thing??

If you read the article you will find that they claim google (as in Alphpabet Inc.) has a lot more information about you than you think.
 
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If you read the article you will find that they claim google (as in Alphpabet Inc.) has a lot more information about you than you think.


Yup, did that and read it even before replying. But I don't even use or bother with a fraction of the stuff they suggest and mention.

Even if I did, as I said, not much that would even be of any concern to me.





- Patrick
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As per my usual curious nature I downloaded and ran DetectX just to see what it would find. Interestingly it turned up a few things I did not expect.


Ditto for me.

Then I thought I'd download and have a look at DetectX Swift.

Downloaded the version from the developer's site and got this when opening the DetectX_Swift.dmg:

The one I downloaded from here opened without any problem:
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/60265/detectx-swift

Just saying...


Screen Shot 2019-02-17 at 1.50.45 PM.png





- Patrick
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I seem I actually get less intrusion type of stuff using Chrome vs using Safari, and I would probably still be using Safari if it would work for all sites properly, but it became too frustrating so I just switched, and Firefox was actually my first choice, but they made some changes and some things didn't work the way I wanted or as useful.






- Patrick
======

Hi Patrick, I share your view about Safari, there are some sites it simply wont work on especially streaming sites. Chrome seems to be able to open just about anything but I do make good use of Ghostery and like you preferred Firefox prior to the changes Mozilla made when they introduced the Quantum version.
For that reason i switched to Waterfox (thanks to Randy for the suggestions), you might be interested in Waterfox too for the same reasons.
"Waterfox is an open-source web browser for 64-bit operating systems, with an aim to be speedy, ethical, and maintain support for legacy extensions dropped by Firefox, from which it is forked."
Here's the link if you'd like to check it out; https://www.waterfoxproject.org/en-US/waterfox/new/
The beauty of it is you can just sync everything straight over from Firefox, extensions, preferences, appearence etc.

Cheers,
Rod
 

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Hmm, I also downloaded it from the developers site Patrick, installed without an issue, so you must have had a hiccup along the way somewhere.
So what did it find?
I listed all the stuff it found on mine in a previous comment on this thread. No disrespect to Malwarebytes but I feel like it did a more thorough job somehow. Phil explained this in his reply (#103) to my post and I like the idea that DetectX reveals changes to Profile and History since previous scans. I think that would be a good tool for troubleshooting. So I think I will just keep both and run them in tandem.
 
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All I get is no threats and DetectX Swift had an update today.
 

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Yes i got that too Harry. Did a clone with CCC first then gave DetectX full disk access. Ran it again and got two instances of .tar files which are part of Quizlet (a language learning app) so I whitelisted them. Otherwise all clear.
 
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"Waterfox is an open-source web browser for 64-bit operating systems, with an aim to be speedy, ethical, and maintain support for legacy extensions dropped by Firefox, from which it is forked."
Here's the link if you'd like to check it out; https://www.waterfoxproject.org/en-US/waterfox/new/
The beauty of it is you can just sync everything straight over from Firefox, extensions, preferences, appearence etc.

Cheers,
Rod



Thanks, Rod, and Randy for the original suggestion I seem to have missed somehow, and the Waterfox.app browser looks quite impressive and I'll have to give it a further perusal and try out.

PS: The "sync" only semed to work using the image from the .dmg when first opened there and before dragging it to the Applications folder and then opening it from there.
Not a big deal for me but thought I'd mention the detail.

I'll give it a try and I hope some of the Chrome extensions I am using will work with it.

If it works better than my Chrome and doesn't have some of the annoyances I have with chrome, it will probably definitely become a keeper, and maybe even my default browser.





- Patrick
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Unfortunately the beta extensions are not available for Waterfox so if you want the MalwareBytes extension you'll have to wait for the full release. Other than that everything works fine.
 

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I have used Waterfox on and off - mostly for sites where I want to use DownThemAll which is great if one needs to download a whole set of files.
I really miss that in Firefox now.

I wonder if I can use Waterfox for my main browser instead of Firefox without losing any Firefox capability.
If I start Waterfox from scratch and import everything from Firefox, would that also import all the prepopulated log in information for the probably hundreds of websites that I have.
Anyone know for sure?
Even with Firefox, if I do an update, Firefos sometimes looses some of the prepopulated info.
 

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I know I can't say for sure. I did import everything, including cookies, but then I did a big clean up of duplicated bookmarks and sites I no longer use. Knowing of course that they were still in Firefox if I did need them.


Sent from my iPhone
 
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Does Waterfox work in Mojave? I downloaded it but it crashes as soon as I launch it.
 
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