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Antivirus necessary?
- Thread starter stevenpa
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Every system is susceptible, but most mac vulnerabilities require user consent, and unfortunately people say yea sure. If you know what you're doing, you don't even need antivirus on a Windows machine.
If you need antivirus for a network (such as a campus or employer) then I would recommend ClamXav.
It is a common misconception that Macs have few vulnerabilities because of market share. The main reason that Macs have such little malware is simply because in order for code to execute in the Mac environment, it needs certain permissions. Therefore, in order for any malware to actually work on Mac, the user often needs to actually give direct permission for the software to run (usually by entering the administrator password). Therefore, barring user error, infection of a Mac is incredibly difficult without physical access to the computer. Even with all the antivirus programs in the world, any computer can be infected, but at least with Macs, if the user is smart about his/her actions, malware won't be of concern.
I wouldn't say that you don't need antivirus on a Windows machine. Windows seems to absolutely NEED antivirus, since so much malware can install itself in the background without explicit user consent. In Windows, it is possible (though rare) to get infected without even going into a browser (just being connected to the internet is sometimes enough).
I completely agree. I have not used antivirus on my home Windows machines in 13 years and have not been infected once (although I still run a firewall on all my machines).
For the times I do need to scan a untrusted App, the large ones get run in a VM with NOD32 (>20MB) and small ones using http://www.virustotal.com/.
You are the first line of defense against Virus'/Malware.
For OS X, just be careful what you download (check reviews first if possible) and where you download it from. Also remember to give any admin account a password.
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No viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any, since it was released 10 years ago. The handful of trojans that exist can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install:
I wonder how many times you've posted this info...yet people keep coming with the same question..!
Short answer: NO ANTIVIRUS NEEDED.
It's more than CLEAR that pretty much any Mac-related threat is based on social engineering and nothing else. There are NO known viruses in the wild, and there's NEVER been one for OS X for that matter.
Besides, EVEN the latest variants of MacDefender (itself inocuous, by the way) required active intervention by the user at one or more stages, be it for installation or running that software (not to mention that "safe open" should always be disabled in Safari, of course) - and MD did NOT install itself in the root-level apps folder, so sandboxing is even more useful here.
I do NOT use AV and do not intend to do, unless something really changes in the Mac malware environment. Lion is already the safest OS on Earth, and I do NOT intend to bloat my computer with irrelevant CPU/RAM demands.
Besides, EVEN the latest variants of MacDefender (itself inocuous, by the way) required active intervention by the user at one or more stages, be it for installation or running that software (not to mention that "safe open" should always be disabled in Safari, of course) - and MD did NOT install itself in the root-level apps folder, so sandboxing is even more useful here.
I do NOT use AV and do not intend to do, unless something really changes in the Mac malware environment. Lion is already the safest OS on Earth, and I do NOT intend to bloat my computer with irrelevant CPU/RAM demands.
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