Newbie to MAC looking for some assurance after getting a pop-up

[CoachB]

When closing down Safari last night a pop warning appeared showing what looked like a hard drive picture and a warning message saying that I may have been infected with a virus and up to 7 Trojans have been identified. It looked scary and even had a Safari symbol in the pop as it was asking me to run a program but it didn't seem to be coming from my MAC. I did not install anything and shutdown the MAC in a panic. Once restarted everything was fine and has been all day. In my download history I saw this pop-up or download. I clicked on it to get info and its to www.spywarefastscannerv9.com. I am not sure if this is just a wild hit to get me to buy some spyware software (which I thought I don't need with the MAC) or some sort of malicious malware. Internet search reveals some unpleasant feedback that its malware. I'm panicking. I never installed anything but this stupid pop-up download is now sitting in my download file with all my other downloads. Should I trash it and move on? This was the first pop-up since I bought the new MAC 5 months ago. I left the PC world because of this stuff. Someone with some MAC skills please tell me its all good. Any advice?

 

[jmann]

Trash it and move on. It is just a fake "warning" to try to get you to download their crap. Delete it out of your downloads folder, and forget about it.

 

[CoachB]

jmann - Thank you for the advice.

 

[ROGERWILCO357]

hmm

i too am new to the mac world and i have been told not to waste my money on anti virus software like nortons but i feel like one day someone is going to say these mac peeps think they are so safe and bamm nuke us? like insurance i wonder better to have protection then not just incase ? i would freak out too this mac world is soo nice isn't it lol

 

[jmann]

i too am new to the mac world and i have been told not to waste my money on anti virus software like nortons but i feel like one day someone is going to say these mac peeps think they are so safe and bamm nuke us? like insurance i wonder better to have protection then not just incase ? i would freak out too this mac world is soo nice isn't it lol

As long as you are smart about what you download you will be fine. Just don't download stuff from shady looking websites, that's never a good idea.

 

[instaxgirl]

As long as you are smart about what you download you will be fine. Just don't download stuff from shady looking websites, that's never a good idea.

Agreed. I've not used antivirus since I got this mac in 2005. I've occasionally had the stupid pop ups the OP's talking about, but I've never ever had a virus.

Worst threat is a trojan (not even a threat if you only download from trusted sources, no torrenting etc), but since you have to install that yourself I don't think AV would help you there.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

like insurance i wonder better to have protection then not just in case ?

The big problem is your faulty assumption that you would have protection if you bought a mac antivirus. As there aren't any, should one appear, the product you bought wouldn't know about it and so wouldn't stop it. So, no protection from that source

Any time you read a report about a mac virus, its a trojan, not a virus. Which means, a program you downloaded and you installed.

As long as you are careful about what you download, install and use, you'll be fine. Especially be careful if you ever run a video or similar that says it needs a codec to be installed, this is a classic way in the windows world of installing trojans and no doubt it wont be long before it appears on mac, if it hasn't already. I'd trust my own judgment than say, Nortons, on what programs are safe to install, giving up that decision to Norton or any other program is asking for trouble because it means you stopped using your brain. So a new Trojan that Norton etc doesn't know about, it would declare safe and you would install. If you have to think each time you install, and do a google on it if unsure, you''ll be 100x safer than with a bogus anti-virus.