Is there need for antivirus/spyware/firewall on Mac OS?

[Ymer]

I've been using my MBP for 8 months trusting the safety of the OS but, today, I tried to access google and it said something about my computer being infected by virus, and asked for letter verification (yep, at http://www.google.com) so it raised my curiosity... do I need anything of this sort with Mac OS X?

And if so, any recommendations?

Thanks!

 

[Joko]

I've been using my MBP for 8 months trusting the safety of the OS but, today, I tried to access google and it said something about my computer being infected by virus, and asked for letter verification (yep, at http://www.google.com) so it raised my curiosity... do I need anything of this sort with Mac OS X?

And if so, any recommendations?

Thanks!

Been on Mac OS for 4 years, not a single problem regarding spyware or viruses. Although I would still keep away from dodgy porn sites and curious links..

 

[Schizophrenic]

I've been using my MBP for 8 months trusting the safety of the OS but, today, I tried to access google and it said something about my computer being infected by virus, and asked for letter verification (yep, at http://www.google.com) so it raised my curiosity... do I need anything of this sort with Mac OS X?

And if so, any recommendations?

Thanks!

Does that happen when yr running windows on yr mac too? i got the same problem every now ad then with my PC

 

[coopermac]

Thing is, if you don't run antivirus/spyware programs how do you know you havn't got something sat there spying on everything you do?

 

[Neil321]

Thing is, if you don't run antivirus/spyware programs how do you know you havn't got something sat there spying on everything you do?

Because there are no known Mac viruses in the wild,i think there's a trojan of a porn site but your've gotta be dumb enough to install & run it

schizophrenic, When i windows world your partition needs all the security help it can get,just install
the usual anti this anti that stuff.In the unlikely event a windows virus migrates across to OS X it
wont understand it so therefor wont affect it

Hope this clears things up

 

[nb705]

Hi,
For the Mac side, the best virus protection we've found is Intego Virus Barrier. But it's seldom necessary (I've never seen a Mac virus in the wild).

For Windows I'd recommend Kaspersky Internet Security, it ranks one of the best security suites available and includes a firewall and a couple of other useful bits and bobs. It also has a heuristic virus detection engine (which i don't believe any other products can match) that detects unknown virii by their behaviour. It also doesn't hog resources *cough*symantec*cough*.

 

[chrisbeebops]

Mac OS X has a firewall built in, and I would recommend keeping it on unless you have a specific reason not to.

In terms of viruses/spyware, most Mac AVs are pretty much only good for scanning for Windows viruses before passing files off to another computer. If you don't need this, then you don't need any AV program with a real-time scanner. Something that only has scan-on-demand might still be useful for the occasional thing.

In order to get infected on Mac, you would have to open the virus file, and then type in your administrator password, in order to give the virus root access to your computer. As long as you keep your firewall up and check what you are giving root access to when typing in your password, there is virtually 0 chance of getting infected with a virus on a Mac.