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Staying virus free?

I

Internaut

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 11, 2009
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All over the place but mostly Somewhere in England
An odd question for an OSX user, I'm sure but..... I had a bit of an "incident" today when I clicked on a link shared by a friend on Facebook. Problems started as soon as I clicked the link. Firstly, I was offered choice of surveys and immediately decided to close the tab, which was when the fun started. On closing the tab, I got the a dialogue to the effect "You are today's winner" offering me the option of staying on the page or closing the tab. I didn't trust either option so I did a force quit on Safari.

Trouble is, in this brave new world of Lion, Safari starts up with all the previously opened websites, so in the end I had to select the close tab option and hopefully, close the tab is all this has done. Now, I know it is quite likely that any damage this rouge site could have done could probably only have been done to a Windows PC but, I believe paranoia is healthy!

I've downloaded ClamXav from the App Store and this found no issues. I've also moved forward my migration to from Safari to Google Chrome (not to suggest that Chrome is any better than Safari but using a different browser seemed sensible). Is there anything else I should be checking?
 
Internaut said:
I've also moved forward my migration to from Safari to Google Chrome (not to suggest that Chrome is any better than Safari but using a different browser seemed sensible). Is there anything else I should be checking?
Click to expand...
You didn't need ClamXav and you didn't need to switch browsers. Just clear your cookies and cache and close Safari. Then open it again.

You can't infect your Mac by clicking on a website link. Macs are not immune to malware, but no true 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 only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install. Also, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion have anti-malware protection built in, further reducing the need for 3rd party antivirus apps.
 
Hi.

I'm not only a newbie to this forum, but a newbie to Macs.

I just purchased a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.7.2

I've heard much about the Mac world being virtually virus free and I have no reason to doubt that, as I have zero experience in this world.

So, my question is, does anyone in the Mac world purchase Anti-Virus software?
In fact, does Anti-Virus software exist for Macs?

I've installed Opera and use that as my browser.
Is Opera as good as, or better than Safari?
 
Rik. said:
So, my question is, does anyone in the Mac world purchase Anti-Virus software?
Click to expand...
Some do, but it's not necessary.
Rik. said:
In fact, does Anti-Virus software exist for Macs?
Click to expand...
Yes, it does, but again, it's not necessary. ClamXav is a good choice if you insist on running antivirus, since it isn't a resource hog, detects both Mac and Windows malware and doesn't run with elevated privileges. You can run scans when you choose, rather than leaving it running all the time, slowing your system.
Rik. said:
I've installed Opera and use that as my browser.
Is Opera as good as, or better than Safari?
Click to expand...
It's up to you which browser you choose. Some prefer Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc. It's a personal preference issue.
 
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