SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

As most mac users are fairly impervious to spyware and virus's, largely because of the small market share the platform holds,do you guys use any anti virus ??

Just curious

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple pushes anti-virus for Macs

dynamix

iTrader: (3)

Nope - not worried at all.

Markus

Interesting to note that Apple's list does not include the free Clam XV anti virus solution, rather they favor commercial solutions.

I think the reason behind Apple's move is mainly due to the dual boot / VM capability of the intel based machines. You'll have new users who have heard tales of the Mac being virus free, so they put XP on there, without any AV / Spyware solution and then get infected and are bemused as to why it happened as "I'm using a Mac, they don't get viruses!".

There is also the age old problem of forwarding on an infected message/file from a Mac to a PC, be it another physical machine, or your dual boot/VM's machine. This I think is the primary reason Mac AV software exists, to scan files for viruses that would cause problems for PC's

Most of the OS X "viruses" that have appeared require your admin name and password to enable them to use privilege escalation to run as root, at which point they can do whatever they like. As with any system, if you blindly enter your name and password without thinking/checking why and what is asking for it, then you are asking for trouble.
I will admit that not all of the viruses for OS X require this, there was a recent one that used a bug in the Apple Remote Desktop client that would allow priv escalation without the name and password, not good, but that issue has since been addressed.

The only other real viruses I think that tend to infect macs are Word/Excel Macro viruses, which I think are probably around.

As for actually answering your question. No, I do not run AV on any of my Macs running the Mac OS. On my iMac that is dual-boot / VM, in the XP side of things, yes, I do run AV, I'm not *that* stupid
The last time I had AV software on Mac OS (bar testing purposes for work) was probably 1998, possibly earlier.

I know I could run AV, and possibly should, to prevent sending infected files to PC users, but if my parents are aware of the threat and have managed to purchase, install, and maintain AV software, then I feel the majority of PC users should be able to do the same to protect themselves from what is currently a predominately PC issue. Yes, I know this sounds very big headed of me.

When there is a significant threat, I probably will run AV software, and my first port of call will be the aforementioned clam XV software. I'm loathe to put anything AV related by Symantec on my machine, as I do recall, back in the day, using it on the Mac and it causing many problems, funny, I seem to recall it still does this on PC's

dynamix

iTrader: (3)

I run McAfee on the parallels XP install in run on it. Never trust anything with a windoze logo to be secure.

RichB

run kaspersky on my xppro install under vm ware but nothing under osx
before kaspersky xp got infected so much it simply wasnt usable.

JackClark

I used to believe that, but the Mac now has a market share equal to the PC a number of years ago with nothing like the quantity of Malware. It was a pretty lame excuse back in my time but is much worse now.

I don't use Antivirus on the Mac OS, but also don't believe it's secure.

GC8

My MAC is a standalone. Despite my previous career I didnt manage to connect the b*stard thing to t'internet and now its used for iTunes and musc: and occasionally to show people how pretty OSX is...

dynamix

iTrader: (3)

have you tried plugging an ethernet cable in ?

GC8

Of course, Im a qualified engineer! I really didnt like not knowing what I was doing though, so I soon gave up.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Dont worry, you dont seem to know what you are doing on Scoobynet either so we are all safe

mike1210

In our computer labs Symantec used to be installed on them as we had a campus agreement with them. Used to slow machine down and on the Intels was running PPC processes in the background even when patched (version 10 would constantly crash until you patched it on Intel based platforms).

Now we don't use any as none of the users have admin access so can't elevate to root and the machines are more stable and run quicker without it.

However watch this space, I know kaspersky are doing an AV for Macs as we speak which should be available soon.

JackClark

With 12 years experience in the antivirus industry I think I have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about.

10 years ago there were how many viruses? 10 years ago there were how many PC's?

Markus

It seems that Apple has recanted

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Now now
Jack is a well respected man in his field.



















Only problem is the field in question grows spuds and has nothing to do with antivirus software