I bought my first mac on Friday. Being a windows user for so long, a person learns to develop certain habits while computing to stay safe online. One of these habits is never logging in as an admin on a pc unless it is absolutely necessary. Is this the same for a mac? I would imagine this would apply to any system, but with MAC's I wonder that if the odds of something malicious happening negates much concern for safe computing.
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good computing habits - admin accounts
- Thread starter odej98
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kastenbrust
macrumors 68030
Like Viruses, there are NO viruses for Mac, so dont bother with a virus scanner etc.
Mac OS X (Leopard) is Unix based and for lots of reasons there isnt really a need to have a seperate admin account, but i guess if it makes you feel happier it cant hurt.
JML42691
macrumors 68020
It isn't as necessary on Macs as it is on PCs, it won't hurt, but it is just a small added measure when it comes to Macs. You don't really need to do it, but doing it won't hurt.
And like another user said, it will basically just ask you for your admin password when any changes need to be made. I didn't bother making a second account to have an admin account, and I still feel safe. But if doing this makes you feel safer, then go ahead, it won't hurt.
And like another user said, it will basically just ask you for your admin password when any changes need to be made. I didn't bother making a second account to have an admin account, and I still feel safe. But if doing this makes you feel safer, then go ahead, it won't hurt.
Apple Ink
macrumors 68000
As long as you are careful and conscious while providing authorization to Mac OS regarding other apps that want to do weird stuff..... you should be fine!
Other than that... Little Snitch is something I'll highly recommend if you're paranoid! Wish they made something like this for Windows...
Other than that... Little Snitch is something I'll highly recommend if you're paranoid! Wish they made something like this for Windows...
I don't really consider myself paranoid, I am just amused when a buddy of mine handed over his Dell laptop to me to get rid of "whatever was on there". After booting into safe mode and running a virus scanner, I found 17 "somethings" on it. I had been using standard/limited accounts on my pc for years and had nothing infect my system (credit goes to firewalls as well) and using a non admin account wasn't an option for him. He paid the price of a complete reinstall.
Either way, I am impressed with Mac. So far, within 10 hours of actual working with it, I got my wireless, parrallels (Vista), and sharing working flawlessly on my mac with no previous knowledge of how the OS works. In terms of MS/PC's this is a daunting task and would take a newb a lot longer.
Apple Ink
macrumors 68000
Frankly neither am I... but being in constant contact with a PC and having to manage it... I have come to appreciate the value of 'preventive measures'... lol... I have Little snitch and I think you should really give it a try... there's a trial available..
My main system that i use two daily has two accounts, one as the main Admin account and one has a my standard user account.
Im not afraid of viruses or anything like that...but if a program gets corrupted, or something happens to a preference file, i can just recreate my standard user account and go from tehre, however if i it happened to my admin account, itd be trickier, whilst you can create a brand new admin account /...to me its just easier with having that extra level security....
they both use passwords but cant make immediate changes without having the admin name an dpassword so it helps in case there ever were to be a problem.
Im not afraid of viruses or anything like that...but if a program gets corrupted, or something happens to a preference file, i can just recreate my standard user account and go from tehre, however if i it happened to my admin account, itd be trickier, whilst you can create a brand new admin account /...to me its just easier with having that extra level security....
they both use passwords but cant make immediate changes without having the admin name an dpassword so it helps in case there ever were to be a problem.