security

[faraz]

I'm a relatively new user to macs. I bought an ibook on the advice of a buddy who raved about their security and stability. Coming from winodws... i was naturally scared of malware, and as much as my friend tried to tell me macs have no such problems, i was skeptical. I have done some research and have only found mentions of a few trojans and keyloggers for os x and even then it is said that they could only be installed by the admin employing the root password.

The main thing i would like to know is whether or not its possible to get infected by spyware or adware by simple tasks such as browsing? I use safari and have the firewall turned on... and i was wondering if there is any anti-virus/malware software out there that i can purchase? I know of virex but the reviews for the software are not at all favourable. Also does anyone know of applications that have spyware built in?? I know for instance real for pc at least has adware...

thanks in advance

faraz

 

[mactropy]

All I can say is that in the past three years of using MACs more frequently, I never had a single problem with adware, malware, spyware or a virus.

Except for when I used Virtual PC with MS Windows XP. Then it all started coming back. I felt right at home.

But don't worry, even then it only affected the Virtual PC environment.

 

[Norouzi]

I agree, I've been a Mac user for years and I've never had any problems from viruses or spyware. I have virex on my machine, but I can't say I ever use it, and on the rare ocasion that it runs itself it's never found anything. I searched for a while for spyware detectors for the mac and actually only found one or two. The one I found searched my entire HD and found no spyware at all, and this was after years of use on the internet without a spyware check. Let's compare that to the usual 8-10 pieces of Spyware that I find on the PC's at work on a daily basis. So I wouldn't worry about spyware at all. As far as viruses go the only thing you really need to worry about is acidentaly fowarding a virus to a PC using friend. The virus won't effect your Mac at all, but you can pass it along to windows users through E-Mail.