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Has anyone installed Sophos Antivirus onto their MBA 11?

silverblack

silverblack

macrumors 68030
Nov 27, 2007
2,680
840
I have it on my iMacs at work, and it never found anything. So I don't have any antivirus on my MBA. You may want to know that the sopho software comes with a clean installer and uninstaller, and so feel free to try it and remove it without hassle.
 
N

newdeal

macrumors 68030
Oct 21, 2009
2,510
1,769
....

not really any point in having this on a mac. maybe in the future there will be more viruses but for now its pretty pointless
 
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aldo818

macrumors regular
Nov 18, 2009
183
0
South of France
I ve sophos on my macbook air 13 and i love it. Didn t noticed any change in performance. The reason i installed it is to not transmitting any viruses etc... via USB from one PC to another when doing group work for example. It s more a protection for the PC who gets the data after me as so far never had a Virus on my Mac but sophos detected some on USB which i got from PC's. These wouldn t have harmed my Mac but i would have passed it on to the next one:D
 
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Mike84

macrumors 6502a
Jun 23, 2010
818
135
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

ZenErik said:
Do you need an antivirus for the zero viruses? :eek:
Click to expand...

There are viruses out there for macs, they are just rare.

I have Sophia on my MBA 13 and love it.
 
jace88

jace88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 3, 2011
320
121
Sydney, Australia
I'm under the impression there are a few Mac viruses out there but none which have hit the headlines. At the end of the day it's inevitable for there to be viruses as Apples have become more popular so I don't want to be one of those people who professed Macs have no viruses only to be the first to get screwed over. That being said I do avoid pirated software/bit torrent so I should be reasonably safe I think.
 
Z

ZenErik

macrumors 6502
Dec 22, 2007
340
2
Massachusetts
Mike84 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)



There are viruses out there for macs, they are just rare.

I have Sophia on my MBA 13 and love it.
Click to expand...
Name one. :p
 
D

ditosou

macrumors member
Jan 27, 2010
61
0
hummmm

anti-virus!!!???.... please close this thread, this is mac rumors guys. You should discuss such issues in a windows forum :)
 
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axu539

macrumors 6502a
Dec 31, 2010
929
0
There are no viruses for Macs. There are some trojans, but those require explicit user permission to run. I had Symantec installed a while ago because my school offered it for free. All it did was hog system resources, so I uninstalled it. Computer immediately ran quicker and cooler.
 
BeyondtheTech

BeyondtheTech

macrumors 68020
Jun 20, 2007
2,146
715
Actually, the virus definition library and engine also detects Windows viruses. Works nicely if you're copying files for someone and they don't know it's infected, or if you're using Parallels or VMware or some other emulator.
 
jace88

jace88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 3, 2011
320
121
Sydney, Australia
Hmm based on the above maybe i'll just stay as is and keep my Avast antivirus on my Boot Camp partition (used in Parallels).
 
maestrokev

maestrokev

macrumors 6502a
Apr 23, 2007
875
8
Canada
BeyondtheTech said:
Actually, the virus definition library and engine also detects Windows viruses. Works nicely if you're copying files for someone and they don't know it's infected, or if you're using Parallels or VMware or some other emulator.
Click to expand...

Very good point, Mac users often forget that they share files with Windows users.
 
deedas

deedas

macrumors regular
Dec 2, 2003
139
0
Baltimore, Maryland
In the 10 years I've used Macs I've never encounter a virus, trojan, worm, etc.

The only one of which I can remember hearing was a trojan that came in a pirated adobe software installer. IMO, if you're pirating software you deserve getting your computer hacked.
 
I

Insilin1i

macrumors regular
Dec 30, 2009
149
0
Toronto, Canada
deedas said:
In the 10 years I've used Macs I've never encounter a virus, trojan, worm, etc.

The only one of which I can remember hearing was a trojan that came in a pirated adobe software installer. IMO, if you're pirating software you deserve getting your computer hacked.
Click to expand...

If you actually knew where to look and not just use google then you wouldn't get infected.... Bittorrents don't all have viruses people just download them from the dumbest places.
 
BeyondtheTech

BeyondtheTech

macrumors 68020
Jun 20, 2007
2,146
715
halledise said:
Sophia is awesome - she is sitting on my air right now … :D
Click to expand...

Considering that the Home Version 7.2 is free and detects both Mac and Windows malware, there's no reason to grab it. At least it frees you from using/buying a subscription for the Windows side.
 
MikePA

MikePA

macrumors 68020
Aug 17, 2008
2,039
0
BeyondtheTech said:
Considering that the Home Version 7.2 is free and detects both Mac and Windows malware, there's no reason to grab it. At least it frees you from using/buying a subscription for the Windows side.
Click to expand...

Microsoft Security Essentials is free so there's no need to buy anything for Windows.
 
KnightWRX

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
Mike84 said:
Oh, you got me. Surely because I cannot name one there are no mac viruses out there.
Click to expand...

You've got that backwards. Here let me help you fix your comment :

Mike84 said:
Surely because there are no mac viruses out there I cannot name one
Click to expand...

There are no Mac viruses. None. Nada. 0.

Trojans aren't viruses. There are Mac Trojans, usually found on the different bittorrent sites. But there are no Mac viruses. Not even one.

Anti-virus software is worthless. Even if you were to get a file with a Windows virus, it would have no impact on your system. None.
 
Rooskibar03

Rooskibar03

macrumors 65816
Feb 5, 2007
1,134
66
State of Denial
I've been using Macs going back to the Quadra days and never once I have installed any Anti-Virus software on over a dozen plus different computers I've owned.

Oh, never needed it either.
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
MikePA said:
Microsoft Security Essentials is free so there's no need to buy anything for Windows.
Click to expand...
So is AVG and a few other anti-virus apps for Windows. Definitely no need to spend money for AV protection for Windows.
 
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