OS 8.6 virus, spyware help

[csubear]

My friend at work has a mom who has an old imac running 8.6. And since he doesn't know to much about macs, and I seem to be the mac expert at work he came to me with the question of what to do about: classic mac os virsus, spyware, browser hijacks, defrag.

Is there any freeware that can help with these thing? I have no clue. I switched into OS X, and have never needed to use classic for anything.

Any help would be great!

 

[igucl]

I would be surprised to find out that any Mac OS has trouble with viruses, but I also just jumped in with OS X.

 

[Littleodie914]

Yea, just remind him it's a Mac, and that he's got nothing to worry about.

 

[csubear]

I guess the problem is, is that there where viruses for classic, and i guess that he is having a problem with the internet browser being hijacked.

 

[Mechcozmo]

There were in fact a few viruses for Pre-X Mac OS. However they pretty much disappeared after OS X because they didn't work in Classic mode.

I don't know where you could find anti-virus software for OS 8.6... but it was out there.

 

[csubear]

Any one still use OS 8 or 9? I know there must be someone that still uses it or has some experience with the old mac OS?

 

[csubear]

any one?

 

[keysersoze]

any one?

Yes. The Melissa virus hit my iMac that was running OS 9.1. But that's only because it had Microsoft Office 98 installed on it. It was more of annoyance than anything.... stupid macro with an irritating random message that would pop-up. Anyway, Norton A/V took care of it, but that wasn't freeware.

EDIT: The Norton version was 7.0. Maybe eBay has some old software floating around....

 

[tpjunkie]

well, let me start with end and work backwards.

Defrags: These are good. Do this every few months or so. try to find norton utilities 6 or 7.
browser hijacks - I wouldn't worry about it. Ever. Mainly cause it won't happen.
spyware: Not going to be a problem here.
virii: these do exist, symantec made some vrisus software for mac, also try checking out virex.

 

[Mord]

tell them to get mac os x or at least os 9.

i would tell them not to worry as most of the true (non word macro) viruses effected os 7 and they dont exist anymore as the number of people useing a pre os x os has diminished so much

 

[csubear]

Thanks, i tell him to pick up an old copy of norton.

I told him that to upgrade to OS X, but i don't think his 64MB of ram can do the job....

 

[Makosuke]

I told him that to upgrade to OS X, but i don't think his 64MB of ram can do the job....

No, it certainly won't. If he can find an inexpensive copy of 9 floating around somewhere (which he should be able to), I would highly recommend the latest version (9.1 or 9.2); it is the least likely to have problems.

I seriously doubt any of the old Classic-compatible viruses are still floating around, but if he's worried about Macro viruses (only really an issue if he exchanges word documents a lot), then it might be a good idea to dig up some Antivirus software. Norton Utilities, on the other hand, for defrag and disk maintenance, is a lot more valuable under OS8/9 than it is under X, and old copies should be very cheap if you can find them.

Given that the available web browsers are NS4, IE5, and Moz1.2 (and maybe iCab), I don't think that browser hijacking is a possibility--if any of those have major vulnerabilities, I'm not aware of them, and I'd bet money nobody's even thinking about writing any spyware compatible with 8.6.