One of Apple’s big selling points is not needing to worry about catching one of those nasty computer viruses floating around the interwebs. However, as Apple gets bigger and bigger, this becomes less and less the case. In fact, hackers see Apple users as soft targets, since they rarely have any kind of protection.
Did you know that 1 in 5 Macs contain Windows malware and 1 in 36 Macs contain Mac malware?
Yeah. Neither did I.
Here’s what I did, and you can, too!
Check Your Firewall
First things first.
Turn on your Firewall.
Go to your Preferences and look under your Security & Privacy:
Check your Firewall settings.
Is it turned-on?
If not, go ahead:
Let’s not stop here.
What about an anti-virus?
Anti-Virus
There are plenty of paid options out there, but I’ve always ran free stuff on Windows, so I see no reason to stop. Sure, paid apps may need less maintenance, but I don’t mind. Besides, after using free anti-virus for over a decade and never having any problems, I’m sold … maybe ‘sold’ isn’t the right word, but you what I mean. đŸ˜‰
The first thing I did was ask vetren Mac users what they use or recommend.
Here were the two dominate apps:
I went with ClamXav. It’s been built for Mac from the ground up.
Installed and ran, here were my results:
Busted!
So glad I did this.
Conclusion
So, are Macs just as likely to gather e-junk than Windows? Yes. Do they? No. Had I gone this long without running anything on my Windows machine, there would have been a lot more than just 3 items.
Surf safe, think twice before downloading, keep up with your Mac updates, and you may want to consider getting some anti virus software installed.
Finally, tell me what you use on your Mac? I would love know!
[HT Geek O System, Michael Novotny & James Cooper | Image via B Rosen]
Raoul Snyman says
Actually, there’s a lot of FUD in there.
Are Macs as likely to get viruses as Windows? No. Because OS X is built on UNIX roots, its permissions system makes it extremely difficult for viruses to propagate. Notice how you had to click the lock to make changes to your firewall? Most Windows users are running as an administrator, and so they don’t have that “lock” and don’t have that security level that OS X has by default.
There are plenty of other technical reasons, but that’s the biggest and most important one. Don’t believe the hype.
Eric Dye says
But it happens.
Brendan says
Very practical, thank you! Would anyone be able to elaborate on the advanced firewall settings? Are they pretty solid by default, or should we be digging in and tweaking?
Eric Dye says
Start with the default (by turning it on). As for the details … sounds like a post đŸ˜‰
Paul Clifford says
I read an article on Norton (or was it Symantec) that was talking about this very thing, but they didn’t emphasize that you can have millions of PC viruses on your Mac’s hard drive, but they do nothing but take up space. It’s like if your body was filled with a virus deadly to another species, but harmless to you. You wouldn’t even know it unless some scientist randomly tested you for that disease’s microbes.
I’ve got over 100 PC viruses on my Mac, but once I delete my spam folder from Gmail (yep, that’s where they all came from), they’ll be gone. No harm, no foul.
There is one Mac virus in the wild and some users have it, but I’ve tested three ways and I don’t. So, what did running ClamXav tell me? I have a bunch of little files I can delete to get more HD space. Yay!
Eric Dye says
#WIN!