That's pretty much the nature of the forum. Those who have been around a while see the same questions and answers repeated over and over, for the new ones joining who don't search the forums before asking questions.
Dude, I said the same
THREAD. The first two pages is littered with it. People are bringing it up before someone even says the wrong thing. It's ridiculous. This thread is about a specific Apple program, not the ignorance of people of the terms virus, trojan, etc. from general malware. It's basically hijacking the thread from the start.
It matters a lot whether something is a virus or a trojan. You need antivirus software to protect against a virus. You don't need AV to protect against a trojan.
What antivirus software??? This is a Mac forum.
Besides, most "antivirus" software (for Windows since almost all of it is for that platform or looking for malware designed against that platform) ALSO protects against trojans, key loggers, data miners and other forms of malware. The days of pure virus protection software ended a decade ago. Your point is once again pretty much moot. The average Windows user just needs to know to get something like AVG. It does the rest.
It's not a technicality or semantics. The user doesn't have to "open it" to have their system infected with a virus. A virus can infect without the user's knowledge or permission, which is why you need antivirus software as a defense. A trojan, by contrast, cannot do anything to harm your system
Dude, I know what a virus is. You're now beating a dead horse (that was dragged into the thread from previous threads) which takes me back to the point at the top of the page. Trojans can be more dangerous than a virus because IF they fool you into thinking it's the real program (or worse yet, it is the real program, but tampered with to include/install a key logger or some other nasty with it), they now have direct access to everything on your machine, not just some odd little quirk like filling dead space with useless junk on the hard drive that could be reversed, but more often than not, identity theft of some kind is the goal (because that's where the MONEY is whereas hackers in the past just got their kicks from wreaking general havoc).
In days long by, you could get a given piece of software (often shareware, freeware, etc.) at any number of distribution sites. Nowadays, you better find the source site and avoid other places because you can never know for sure when something has been tampered with (although that's where programs like AVG for Windows come in handy as they can often spot it unless it's brand new).
