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    Anti-Virus for MAC

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by ral, Nov 16, 2010.

  1. ral

    ral Notebook Evangelist

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    Sohpos AV is offering free anti-virus for MAc's.

    Free Mac Anti-Virus - Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition

    Am new to Mac's. I use one in the office, but I do not install anything in it, since the IT people regulate the software installed. They do not install an anti-virus program.

    I was given a Mac recently, and been looking at what software to install. Do I need an AV scanner?
     
    ral, Nov 16, 2010
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  2. Jervis961

    Jervis961 Hall monitor

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    Never used one and have been fine. The majority of viruses are written for the PC due to the larger user base. If you are careful you should be fine without it but if it makes you comfortable go ahead and get one.
     
    Jervis961, Nov 16, 2010
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  3. diGit_S

    diGit_S Notebook Guru

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    Well, I do have ClamXAV installed. It doesn't run in the background like AV-scanners on Windows, so it doesn't take up any system resources. Only on-demand scanning.
    Still handy for scanning a file you're not sure about. Or, in my case, clean up the external NTFS-drives of my Windows-user friends who get all sorts of nasty stuff on there ;)
     
    diGit_S, Nov 16, 2010
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  4. ral

    ral Notebook Evangelist

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    The only time I have ever encountered a virus in my Windows machine is on this few occasions where I have had to insert a USB Flash Disk belonging to someone else to copy or save a file. Maybe two in the past three years...
     
    ral, Nov 16, 2010
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  5. PopRoxMimo3

    PopRoxMimo3 Notebook Deity

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    its free. id get it.
     
    PopRoxMimo3, Nov 17, 2010
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  6. GaresTaylan

    GaresTaylan Notebook Consultant

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    If you need AV on your MAC, you're doing something very wrong. Even my fiancee', whom is computer illiterate and clicks on ads/goes to sites that reek of trouble all the time has never had an issue on her macbook.
     
    GaresTaylan, Nov 17, 2010
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  7. diGit_S

    diGit_S Notebook Guru

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    In my Windows-days, I've had to deal with 3 viruses at max in almost 10 years of use. Still, while OS X may not be as vulnerable to viruses as Windows is nowadays, I do have something installed for on-demand scanning for two reasons:

    a) I don't want to sound paranoid, but if you have no way of checking, how can you ever be sure everything is clean?
    b) with Apple computers increasingly growing more popular, malicious coders' interest in the platform will grow as well

    Just my 2 cents :)
     
    diGit_S, Nov 17, 2010
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  8. ifti

    ifti Undiscovered

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    This is what Im afraid of also.

    Anyone tried this Sophos Antivirus?? How does it run on the MAC?? Notice any slowdowns, or resource hogging??

    I use Sophos on my work network, and seems to run perfectly fine - never had any issues with it.

    I guess its better to be safe then sorry?
     
    ifti, Nov 17, 2010
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  9. Nick

    Nick Professor Carnista

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    I use iAntiVirus. Very light on resources.
     
    Nick, Nov 17, 2010
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  10. theseadragon

    theseadragon Notebook Consultant

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    Comcast provides free Norton Antivirus (for Windows or Mac); I just started running the Mac version; it seems OK to me (I don't see any big performance hit, et.).
     
    theseadragon, Nov 17, 2010
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  11. ifti

    ifti Undiscovered

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    I hate Norton and McAfee and wouldn't ever use them after seeing how resource eating they were after testing some of the smaller free antivirus applications on windows.
     
    ifti, Nov 17, 2010
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