Spyware and popups

[masterjedi73]

I was watching a report on CNN a few minutes ago and they were talking about spyware. They only mentioned remedies for windoze machines, though. Can macs be infected with spyware, and what is the best way to get rid of it? Also, is there a good popup blocker for mac?

thanks!

[Horrortaxi]

Safari will block pop-ups. I've never heard a single report of spyware on the Mac. 5% market share is a good thing.

[virividox]

yup havent heard of spyware on the mac yet. thankfully.

[laserbeahm]

One of the great things about OS X is that it always asks for an administrative password before any software can be installed. On Windows machines, spyware often gets installed behind people's backs. All the more reason to use a Mac.

[hobbes3113]

The only spyware that I have ever encountered on my Mac is when my girlfriend looks over my shoulder.

[masterjedi73]

Nice. That's what I was thinking...i just wasn't sure. I've only owned a mac for 2 weeks.

[Westside guy]

It would probably be fairly trivial to write a cross-platform piece of spyware using something like Java. There would be some thought necessary regarding how to get it sneakily running on the various OSes, but I'm sure a determined sneak could do it. :)

[Counterfit]

But then we could just check top or Activity Monitor and see something running that shouldn't be, kill it, then find and delete it.

[jasylonian]

unfortunately, i have no idea what half the things on my activity monitor are:(

[masterjedi73]

what's the activity monitor?

[virividox]

look in your applications folder, then subfolder utilities

it shoudl be there Activity Monitor, its like the window you get when u hit control alt del on a pc, shows u whats running, ram usage etc

[bennetsaysargh]

be careful you don't quit some things though. once i did it, and i accidentally logged out all of the users with one button:p

[Mav451]

Well one of the biggest gaping security holes is in the most-used browser in the world-IE.

Unfortunately, M$ likes to leave everything wide open, security level set fairly low, oh and of course, the famous ActiveX holes.

Since i consider Safari to be the Mac equivalent of a Mozilla Firebird of sorts, these holes don't even exist.

For those of you who haven't used it before, here's one of the biggest reasons i use SpyBot:S&D:

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~ahuang/spybot_1.JPG

[Counterfit]

Originally posted by bennetsaysargh
be careful you don't quit some things though. once i did it, and i accidentally logged out all of the users with one button:p Been there, done that :D