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Just realised there is a built in firewall - should i switch it on?

T

themoffster

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 26, 2011
151
0
I would never use a PC on the new without firewalls and antivirus, but I was led to believe there were no viruses for macs (i just got my first one).
However when playing about in the settings I saw there was a firewall which by default is switched off.

Should i be switching it on? I'm not sure what the benefits would be if there are no viruses etc.

Thanks for any advice.
 
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Turn it on! You probably won't have any problems anyway. But there aren't really any down sides to turning it on. Like say for example you had a house in the safest place in the world. Someone gave you a free alarm system. Your house probably wouldn't get broken into anyway but you may as well use it (and let's say the alarm never needs to be touched and just works). Also if anything bad was released later on you would have your firewall already protecting your Mac. Just my 2 cents, hope  I helped :)
 
Depends on how you're hooked up to the outside world. Since you posted here we assume you at least have internet access :rolleyes:

If your router has sufficient protection then I wouldn't bother. On occasion I've installed software and then had to manually open ports in the Mac firewall, which I find rather counterintuitive (you have to go into Advanced… and then it lists stuff by application name, not by port :confused: ).

Rob
 
themoffster said:
Should i be switching it on? I'm not sure what the benefits would be if there are no viruses etc.
Click to expand...
Yes, turn it on. It protects against unwanted access to your Mac, which is a different issue than malware. You don't need any antivirus software to protect Mac OS X from malware. No 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 handful of trojans that exist can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install:
 
Excellent. Thanks guys, most definitely turned on. Already asked me for Skype permission so it's working anyway!

Never even knew it was there.:confused:
 
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