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ericssonboi · Oct 18, 2004, 06:23 PM

Hi all,
I'm kind of new to the Mac scene.. havn't owned one since the Classic Macintosh's..

I'm wondering if its possible to have adware or spyware on Macs...

I'm sure many of you know that PCs has lots of empty holes for these types of things to enter.. I'm wondering if its possible on a Mac?

How about if your running VirtualPC?

Any comments appreciated

storer · Oct 18, 2004, 06:29 PM

It is extremely unlikely that there is any spyware or adware out there for OS X, so I wouldn't be worried. However, on the VPC front, i cant be sure.

The Oracle · Oct 18, 2004, 06:44 PM

Adware, Spyware..

..Software

ericssonboi · Oct 18, 2004, 07:01 PM

So will it be possible for any spyware and adware to be able to get on to VPC?

bradoesch · Oct 18, 2004, 07:26 PM

Originally posted by ericssonboi:
So will it be possible for any spyware and adware to be able to get on to VPC?

Absolutely, but it won't affect OS X once you shutdown VPC.

ManOfSteal · Oct 18, 2004, 07:26 PM

Originally posted by ericssonboi:
So will it be possible for any spyware and adware to be able to get on to VPC?

Sure it's possible; however, if infected...it "should" only effect the disk image file you are using to load the Windows environment within VPC as far as I know...

ericssonboi · Oct 18, 2004, 08:02 PM

Sounds good to me... As long as it doesn't affect Mac OS X.

Running spyware removal or reformatting windows should do the trick..

Thanks for the input

DeathMan · Oct 19, 2004, 01:38 AM

For windows, use firefox as your default browser, and if you have to do email, use thunderbird, and that should solve 99% of you adware/spyware problems (assuming you don't download and install whatever crap software you get popups for (assuming you don't have a popup blocker)).

While it is very possible to have spyware on a Mac, it is pretty hard to get away with it. Its not easy to run things in the background on OS X, and not have it be glaringly obvious.

Millennium · Oct 19, 2004, 07:13 AM

Only one piece of spyware is ever known to have been written for OSX: a port of LimeShop. It used to come with LimeWire, but doesn't anymore. No other spyware is known to exist on Macs, and again, LimeShop is no longer in use even by LimeWire.

This said, LimeShop proved what people who really know about Mac security have been saying for years: we're better, in part because of small marketshare but mostly because of an inherently more secure architecture, but we are not invincible. It would be a good idea to stay on guard.

As for VPC, it is as easy for VPC to be infected by spyware as it is for Windows (since it is Windows, after all). However, such spyware should not be able to "escape" the emulated environment and infect the Mac. If you share folders between VPC and OSX, then spyware could scan the folders you share, but only those, and even if it copies itself into one of those folders it won't be able to run on the OSX side.

Sosa · Oct 30, 2004, 11:25 PM

This is comforting to know. Yet, I can't help but feel that someone, out there, is watching us too. Perhaps they are keeping track of the sites we visit while on their network, or the US government has some secret back door key to OS X, or an unknown spyware for Macs we haven't discovered yet.