[cmeisenzahl]

Coming form the WinTel world I'm used to running ZoneAlarm for a firewall, 3 different anti-spyware/adware tools, and AVG for anti-virus stuff.

Back in the System 7 days I remember using an anti-virus tool.


What if anything will my soon to be delivered G4 iBook need for a firewall, anti-spyware, and anti-virus?

My desktop WinTel machine has a wireless linksys 80211b router than I'm hoping will work w/ the iBook. ;-)

Thanks again guys!

Chris

[legacyb4]

Firewall - disable non-needed services, enable built-in firewall

Anti-spyware - what's that?

Anti-virus - again, what's that?

Originally posted by cmeisenzahl:
What, if anything, will my soon to be delivered G4 iBook need for a firewall, anti-spyware, and anti-virus?

[ghporter]

Yes, use the built in firewall; it's a very good one.

There ARE viri out there aimed at Macs. Not protecting yourself from them is just not smart.

I use Symantec AV, and I like it a lot. It's not terribly expensive, and has actually caught more than a couple of infected emails I've received. It also scans files pretty quickly, and automatically scans any disk you mount-including USB flash drives, installation images, etc. Very nice.

However, there are so few spywares out there that target Macs specifically, that there doesn't seem to be a demand for spyware killers-yet.

[legacyb4]

True; guess I've just gotten lazy with mac.com filtering out viruses as well as my mail gateways at work. Yes, because of your PC friends, you may wish to invest in some basic anti-virus stuff (free with mac.com, btw).

Cheers.

Originally posted by ghporter:
There ARE viri out there aimed at Macs. Not protecting yourself from them is just not smart.

I use Symantec AV, and I like it a lot. It's not terribly expensive, and has actually caught more than a couple of infected emails I've received. It also scans files pretty quickly, and automatically scans any disk you mount-including USB flash drives, installation images, etc. Very nice.

[tooki]

Originally posted by ghporter:
Yes, use the built in firewall; it's a very good one.

There ARE viri out there aimed at Macs. Not protecting yourself from them is just not smart.

I use Symantec AV, and I like it a lot. It's not terribly expensive, and has actually caught more than a couple of infected emails I've received. It also scans files pretty quickly, and automatically scans any disk you mount-including USB flash drives, installation images, etc. Very nice.

However, there are so few spywares out there that target Macs specifically, that there doesn't seem to be a demand for spyware killers-yet.

I gotta disagree with you there!

1. The plural, in English, is viruses. (If it were Latin, the plural would be "virus", I am told.)

2. There are exactly zero viruses for Mac OS X. All the existing Mac viruses (the ones that have not gone extinct, 99% of which have) could only infect the Classic environment, and then only if Classic is installed at all and is running, and an infected Classic-mode program is run!

3. No infected email can affect or infect Mac OS X, since they're written to infect Outlook, whose scripts the Mac can't run even if you try. Macs are 100% immune to all existing email viruses, and by design essentially immune to all future ones, too.

4. There is no spyware for Mac, none. Zilch. LimeWire installed the vaguely adware-like LimeShop for a little while, but it was very short-lived and did not replicate.

Antivirus software can be good for making sure you don't accidentally pass a PC-virus-infected file to a vulnerable PC user, but the Mac itself is immune to all the malware that is out there now.

There are some trojan horses out there (namely, the <100KB file that's been floating around the file-sharing networks, claiming to be the Office 2004 installer), and proof-of-concept trojans of other kinds have been created, but never actually released into the wild. Similarly, many people saw the recent "rootkit" release as a virus, even though it actually needs to be manually installed using an admin password -- again, it's not in the wild, and can't reproduce.

So frankly, the built-in firewall (or a simple NAT router) is all the protection the normal user needs. Antivirus software has nothing to look for on Mac OS X.

tooki

[ghporter]

I bow to Tooki's greater and more thorough knowledge. I must admit that I had lumped viruses and trojans into one category, and that was inexact at the least. I was nevr ay gud spelar, neither.

I'm paranoid as all get out when it comes to computer security. I do tend to err on the side of caution, so we use Symantec AV on my wife's iBook and update it regularly.

I am a product of a lot of computing experiences, many of which are too painful to go into right now, but they have given me a reflexive desire to hide behind a good AV client, and to urge everyone else to do likewise. Trojan or otherwise, malware is a bad thing and I don't like the idea of letting the script kiddies and byte bandits get by with anything.

Call me Mr. Antivirus if you want, but I use them and like to have them, even on Mac.

[CaptainHaddock]

"Call me Mr. Antivirus if you want, but I use them and like to have them, even on Mac."

I think that's really a Windows user mentality, something one needs to get rid of to really enjoy the freedom of a Mac. There's simply no need for anti-virus or anti-adware programs, so why burden yourself and your pocketbook? Spend that money instead on some of the wonderful programs that Mac-only boutiques like Panic (www.panic.com) and Omni produce.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
There's simply no need for anti-virus or anti-adware programs, so why burden yourself and your pocketbook? Spend that money instead on some of the wonderful programs that Mac-only boutiques like Panic (www.panic.com) and Omni produce.

Fortunately for me, the software was free; one of the few logical benefits from my last job. If I was going to work at home (read that "since we expect you to do a whole lot of work at home") I had to make sure I had the latest antivirus software installed on my computer. No sweat, and Symantec made it easy. I even have it installed on my PDA (yes that's really kind of overboard, but you don't know where I've found wireless access with that bad boy!).

I haven't looked at the logs on the iBook to see if anything has been caught, and considering that we don't even do any POP3 mailing with it, I probably don't need the AV software. It just takes a long time to feel comfortable without that security blanket, after so long NEEDING it, particularly at work.

<official>Lightening up here!</official>

[jmiddel]

Hate to disagree, but the Latin plural of virus is viri. See links below. That is why I always refer to more than one asparagus as asparagi

http://www.rostra.dk/latin/stuvxyz.html#v

http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/l...us&amp;ending=

[CaptainHaddock]

Jmiddel, I too am a pedant; and if virus had a correct Latin plural ending, I would use it.

The word "virus" does come from Latin, but the Latin word (meaning "venom") has no plural, because it belongs to the non-countable class of nouns � much like the word "venom" in English, in fact.

People sometimes incorrectly infer the form "virii" because of similar plurals like radii, but the -ii ending only occurs in Latin words that end in -ius.

Moreover, the plural ending -i is only used for masculine nouns in Latin, and virus is neuter. If one were to construct a real Latin plural, "vira" would be correct (though, as mentioned, virus should not be pluralized in Latin). The word you cite, viri, is actually the plural of vir, meaning man. [Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus]

So we are stuck with the anglicized plural "viruses".

[ghporter]

CaptainHaddock, that was way cool. Thanks for the explanation; I never took Latin in school, as it wasn't offered in high school, and my foreign languages in college were Pascal, Fortran, ADA and Cobol. C is not a foreign language, it's more of a philosophy with a lot of very adamant philosophers!

Back to the orignial subject of this thread, yes (as if you all hadn't guessed), I have an extensive Windows background and have only recently come into the fresh air with Macs. But my feelings about security are very strong, and I'm not likely to become less security concious any time soon. Quite the contrary; I intend to be that harsh voice that warns people that opening their computers up to unknown people to share the contents of their hard drive is a risky thing and fraught with peril. I will, however, do my best to not proseletize too much about AV software on Macs, as such aren't anywhere near as necessary as they are for Windows computers.

[Randman]

Then wouldn't the plural be virus, as one does with moose, fish, venom and the like?

[analogika]

Originally posted by Randman:
Then wouldn't the plural be virus, as one does with moose, fish, venom and the like?

No, because this is English, not Latin, and in English, "virus" IS countable, resulting in a perfectly vanilla plural form - viruses.

[Randman]

Originally posted by analogika:
No, because this is English, not Latin, and in English, "virus" IS countable, resulting in a perfectly vanilla plural form - viruses.

Moose and fish are countable. You don't use mooses or fishes.

[analogika]

Originally posted by Randman:
Moose and fish are countable. You don't use mooses or fishes.

you're right, of course.

(except that "fishes" *is* a permissible plural, but that has a distinct meaning from the plural "fish")