I'm not too worried about viruses myself, but are Mac users likely to transfer viruses to others because we aren't running antivirus apps? If I often send files to clients and co-workers, should I be running antivirus?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Virus issues
- Thread starter hkriffraff
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I dunno, I guess I would. Better safe than sorry in my opinion. It'll be a travesty having Norton on your Mac. However, losing a client will be much, much worse. Hope the anti-virus program, whichever you may choose, doesn't bog down your mac too much.
Cheers
Cheers
AVOID NORTON AT ALL COSTS!!!!
It will totally spanner your computer. Everytime I have used Norton either on a PC or a Mac it brings your machine to a screeching halt and errors pop up all over the place (even when your system is fine).
If you are worried about 'forwarding' a virus use Virus Barrier. However think about what you are doing. You would be paying £50 plus a yearly subscription to keep someone elses machine safe.
It will totally spanner your computer. Everytime I have used Norton either on a PC or a Mac it brings your machine to a screeching halt and errors pop up all over the place (even when your system is fine).
If you are worried about 'forwarding' a virus use Virus Barrier. However think about what you are doing. You would be paying £50 plus a yearly subscription to keep someone elses machine safe.
If you want to run an antivirus app, use ClamXAV. Free (but the dev welcomes donations), easy to use, and totally non-intrusive. I've been using it since Panther just to be on the safe side, and I've never had an issue with it. I've also never encountered a virus on OS X, but that might be another story.
Yes, it's true. Great minds think alike. And even mediocre minds can align from time to time too.
The only time it slows down is during the post-download file scan CPU spike. I've never had a problem with speed otherwise.
And I didn't say I was scanning exclusively for Mac viruses. I get tons of Windows documents every day, and I prefer to run an AV app so as not to pass on infected files. To me, it's worth it to be a bit considerate, even if the Windows users are stupid enough to be running an unprotected PC.
I agree.
I haven't used it, but if it taxes a dual core CPU, there are other issues you need to deal with.
And, believe it or not, there ARE a decent amount of *nix malware out in the wild wild web. I see them every day (I'm a security consultant). Whether it will infect your OS X setup is really besides the point, because one day, the Mac world will be surprised. Better to address mindsets now than be reactive to future problems after the fact, IMO.
I'm not using a dual core CPU. I'm on a G5. See my specs below each of my posts.
The background post-download scanning does peak my CPU (according to the sound of my fans and MenuMeters stats) but for small 50k files like Word docs it barely lasts a second or two. I have ClamXAV set to scan whatever I download on BitTorrent, too, and with 600MB+ files it can take a minute or so. Yes, I wish it consumed no resources at all, but even Dashboard is CPU-hungry when it's invoked.
I should think that, as a security consultant, you'd want to acquaint yourself with something like ClamXAV. Give it a spin. It's not perfect, but it's the best AV app I've used on either Mac or Windows.
Or try Intego Antivirus, it caused no noticeable slowdown on my iMac G5, and it scans pretty quickly too. The problems that it suffers are caused by the fast mode so just disable the fast mode, as it crashes, but it still scanned 160GB of data in about 1 hour.
It's a lot better than Clam XAV anyway.
It's a lot better than Clam XAV anyway.
Having ClamAV scan 600+MB files is going to take some time. That may be a bit more than it was designed to do.
I know enough about it to recommend it when needed. I usually run other security measures: Snort on the LAN and right before my LAN and IPF. I also know don't open questionable e-mail attachments. Additionally, I don't typically download content that may possibly contain malicious payload. I can be a consultant and not personally try every single security software solution available (that's a tall order with open-source).