Firewall Norton Or OS X

[1934hotrod]

What are your thoughts regarding the operation of these firewalls? Is one preferred over the other, what feature of the Norton or Mac do you find desirable.

Anything note worthy please speak up, thanks in advance.

 

[satcomer]

What are your thoughts regarding the operation of these firewalls? Is one preferred over the other, what feature of the Norton or Mac do you find desirable.

Anything note worthy please speak up, thanks in advance.

Whatever you do DON'T install Norton on OS X. MANY OS X users consider Norton to the BANE of OS X!

Depending on your version of OS X consider the free/donationware applications like WaterRoof or NoobProof. If you are on 10.9.x then get the free IceFloor. No need to spend a lot of money.

 

[1934hotrod]

Whatever you do DON'T install Norton on OS X. MANY OS X users consider Norton to the BANE of OS X!

Depending on your version of OS X consider the free/donationware applications like WaterRoof or NoobProof. If you are on 10.9.x then get the free IceFloor. No need to spend a lot of money.

OS is 10.6, my wife's windows box got infected, facebook what a surprise,

Comcast wanting to keep their servers clean. Recommend and supplied Norton for the Mac & PC, Norton AntiVirus and Firewall as a bundle. I have been around Macs for a while. Norton was the first to step up and provide tools for the Mac. They were better then the disk fist aide back in the day. So I am reasonably, experienced, familiar and trusting that Norton is a good tool.

I am only questioning the Mac & Norton firewall applications. Thank you for taking the time and the information you have provided. I will look at the suggestions in order to have broader knowledge as to what is out there.

Thanks

 

[maflynn]

Ugh, if the box says Norton avoid it like the plague, it causes more issues then it purports to solve

Check out little snitch

 

[1934hotrod]

Can you site one example to back what you say or you just passing hearsay. Do you have any personal experiences to share, unless otherwise I will kindly decline to accept your recommendation.

Little snitch, does not look like something I would need + do not do google anything

 

[Attonine]

No need for Norton at all. Just activate the OS X firewall. I can't remember the configurations specific to 10.6, enable stealth mode won't do any harm, just add the applications from your apps folder and you can then forget about everything.

You could install and run ClamX AV if you share files with your wife's PC. At this stage ClamX will simply scan your Mac for windows viruses and clean them, this will prevent you passing anything nasty back into your wife's, or anyone else's Windows box. The Windows viruses of course won't affect your Mac, but if they are in an email or some other archive, they can be passed onto Windows machines.

 

[northernmunky]

I've been a Mac user almost 10 years now and never ever had a reason to install Antivirus, and I wasn't even aware any third parties still made Firewall s/w for Mac.

Long story short, DO NOT install Norton or any other third party crud. MacOSX's firewall is perfectly adequate and I'd go as far as to say Antivirus isn't strictly necessary either but if you really want to then ClamXav will do just fine.

Anything else will cause more problems than it solves.

 

[r0k]

Can you site one example to back what you say or you just passing hearsay. Do you have any personal experiences to share, unless otherwise I will kindly decline to accept your recommendation.

Little snitch, does not look like something I would need + do not do google anything

I can't personally cite one example of Norton messing up my Mac because I trust and listen to the advice available at MR and I never have installed it.

Have you considered searching mroogle? That would get you hundreds of posts about Norton. I looked at the first half dozen or so threads and I didn't find one post saying Norton was any good. I did find dozens of posts that said it was junk, many of which appeared to be from experience.

I would avoid Little snitch. It can be a huge pain and reminds me of zonealarm on the pc. And yes I used LS for years. I decided I'd had enough, perhaps because I develop network software for OSX and I grew tired of constantly telling LS it could trust a program I compiled 5 minutes earlier. I also have experience with clamxav. I used it for a while, back when I couldn't believe all the advice that you really don't need antivirus on OSX. It was small and lightweight and stayed out of my face. I haven't installed it in several years now that I know I don't need it.

The OSX firewall is all you really need. <--This.

 

[1934hotrod]

Here is what I learned, I have had Norton running for two years. I asked the question about the 2 firewalls OS X and the Norton Fire wall. The question was thrown out looking for any thing positive about the OS X firewall.

So I read and as anyone can see in the answers, all I got was ... I read this and that, millions Say Norton evil firewall, blah, blah, blah. No one actually used it just parroting others.

So I say well lets just try this out, it is an easy fix if things do not work out. Run the uninstaller to remove all files of the evil Norton application. Turn on the fabulous OS X firewall and let it rip.

At first, 2 days no difference, then Safari started to get lost, FireFox acting up also. Started looking for answers, after checking things out network wise, the only thing that was changed was the firewall. Common sense tells me ........ must be the firewall, fantastic logic.

I use this trusty old Mac to daily remote all over the USA to admin and hardware test Sun machines, data centers and gateways. Without going into any details other than that, letting the doubters know I am no boot.

Long story short, OS X firewall turned off, Norton reinstalled, smooth sailing ahead, everything is back to normal. Conclusion people that have problems with the Norton application not all, more than likely are the problem, end users. Like most problems related to computers, not including failing hardware, to be clear.

Not an expert, but one mans opinion that has experienced the difference.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

Turn on the fabulous OS X firewall and let it rip.

At first, 2 days no difference, then Safari started to get lost, FireFox acting up also.....

....Long story short, OS X firewall turned off, Norton reinstalled, smooth sailing ahead, everything is back to normal. Conclusion people that have problems with the Norton application not all, more than likely are the problem, end users. Like most problems related to computers, not including failing hardware, to be clear.

Not an expert, but one mans opinion that has experienced the difference.

With your IT background you do know at first when a firewall is turned on stuff is supposed to break, right? If its being nice and convenient...its not working right. A good firewall solution in my experience will bug the crap out of you for days to allow exceptions and have some service not work until exceptions made.

Also when your browsers acted up did you do any research. Sometimes but not always I found its usually do to potentially questionable use of say iframes on a site. Iframes in a nutshell are websites in websites. Common use is rented out space given to an advertiser who helps pay for site. Generally site owner has no control on this.

SO while main page is legit and making the firewall happy, the iframe website within may trip the firewall. If for example its saying I want to come back in on port 666 after a request went out on 80 or 443 (and its not DOOM or you have not made the exception for DOOM port if installed) a good firewall setup should be going something is not right here....

Not all uses of iframes are bad. FBI I wanna say a few months back had a sicko into child stuff put up a nice little section in his underground website after they caught him. Iframe had a loaded package in it. So before site was killed FBI collected data to catch more sicko's. +100 for the good guys...but it shows the power Iframes if not used with good intentions. Also shows why sometimes if you firewall is being a pita....it may be a good thing.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've been a Mac user for 27 years, since 1987.

Back in the days of the original Mac OS, the only virus "protection" I used was John Norstad's "Disinfectant" INIT. Never had an infection once.

Since I moved over to OS X ten years ago, I use no virus protection at all.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Never had an infection or trojan in OS X.
AGAIN, NOTHING.

I download anything I want.
Open any attachment I wish.
No infections, nothing.

Perhaps there -are- infections and trojans running I don't know about. If that's the case, send me more, because my Macs all run GREAT.

It doesn't matter if your wife uses a Windows machine and it gets infected.
That's a problem on the PC.
It has nothin' to do with the Mac.

Perhaps in the future, this will change.
But I wouldn't worry too much over it now...

 

[Mearle]

A few weeks ago I discovered one serious weakness in Norton ant-virus. It allowed trojan infected email attachments to infect my computer with all the following infections:
OSX.Malcol.2
W97M.Downloader.M
VBS.Downloader.M
VBS.Downloader.B
Trojan.Gen.NPE

I found them only by doing a full scan; some had already saved to external connected hard drives.
Of course, I deleted them all with Norton, but by then the damage was done. Somehow. I don't know how, the malicious emails targeted a vulnerability in Little Snith and replaced the Snitch settings for the connection blocking. So they gave themselves permission to upload and download anything at all they wanted from my computer while blocking completely my own access to the internet.
Luckily I caught this before it got too far. After I deleted the trojans/virus with Norton I still had a corrupt Little Snitch. To Little Snitches credit, on the reboot, it informed me that all the settings had been replaced and would I like to return to the defaults. Which I did, giving me back my internet access.

At this point I will never ever open an email in my Mac Mail program again. I don't trust it. It allowed multiple infections to hit my Mac... and without even opening the emails. Even their presence in the Trash still wasn't good enough to stop their evil intentions.
So, No. I don't trust Macintosh security, and now I won't even trust their firewall either.