[watherton]

Wonder if any of you could cast some light... I am looking to protect my mac (10.6.2) and have read several review from the likes of Norton, Samantics etc, but would like to know from the people which is the best one. I am not bothered about cost, more about form - so I need to know if any one has had issues with scanners trying to scan the Time Machine drive etc.

Thanks in advance

[olePigeon]

Symantec is just another name for Norton. Avoid them like the plague.

I'm a big fan of Sophos. Unfortunately it's horribly expensive unless you're a big company.

[watherton]

OlePigeon,

thanks for the reply, I was looking for personal use (should of mentioned), but i will have a look thanks.

[cgc]

Probably the best thing you can do to protect your Mac is to install Little Snitch.

[dedalus]

You should install Little Snitch, stops applications from ‘calling home’.
You might want to install NetBarrier in order to do ‘full stealth’ browsing.

Everything else is a waste of money. All the ‘Mac anti‑virus’ companies are scammers: they lie about vulnerability on their websites and on their packaging, and they have never been able to write any OS X viruses despite tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of rewards having been offered for years. Who do you think writes viruses, anyway? It’s a scam designed to sell AV software. The only ‘reason’ to dish out money on anti‑virus software if you’re a Mac user is if you’re on a file‑sharing intranet with Windows PCs, so that you don’t pass on viruses to them, and, let’s be perfectly honest: even that is rubbish. It’s their responsibility to safeguard their POS systems, not yours. They already have all that AV crap on their stupid little boxes, that should do it, shouldn’t it?

Besides, all the ‘protection from phishing’ etc. crap they’re on about these days is absurd. Those kinds of exploits work through something called ‘social engineering’, i.e. conning suckers into acting against their own interests. There is no way for the OS or any AV or blocking software to protect the user from his own stupidity.

Seriously, don’t waste your money on any of that rubbish. Unless you act like a retard, you’re already a million times safer than any Windows user, even without any protection on. Turning on the firewall built into OS X is more than enough for most people.

[olePigeon]

It's not complete rubbish. If you run Office and open Word documents, there's a decent chance of getting a Word Macro. We get them all the time at the school where I work. It's extremely annoying. It turns all your word documents into read-only template files and you can't get any work done.

If there was a free scanner that also disinfected that would detect Word Macros, I might agree that you don't need it for personal use. In a corporate environment, you need it to protect your peers even if you can't get infected.

[tooki]

Your school still gets macro viruses?!? Doesn't Word warn you EVERY TIME you open a file with a macro and let you disable the macro? I've never seen Word completely block the file or make it read-only.

Either way, if you run Office 2008, you are immune to macro viruses, since Office 2008 doesn't support VBA.

dedalus: while I agree that AV software on a Mac is mostly pointless, your insinuation that AV vendors create viruses is pure conspiracy theorist. These days, viruses are written by organized crime, it's all about money. (Unlike the old days, when it was vandalism by individuals.)

[ghporter]

I take issue with ole's suggestion that one must avoid Norton/Symantec AV products "like the plague." I used them for years (required by my school) without a single issue or difficulty-except that (logically) they were hard to uninstall when my OS version upgrade outpaced their version upgrades. Again, never a bobble. But since I graduated and I'm not required to use it anymore, I have uninstalled it.

Ole, did you know that Norton AV 10 (for Mac) actually identified Office documents that had "questionable" macros? And that it would work with Office to block the macros' operation? Or that since around 2001, all versions of Office have been configured out of the box to block macros by default? It's possible that you're using a corporate-customized version of Word that is set to do stupid stuff, but like tooki, I've never seen the behavior you describe.

I do however completely agree that being a good neighbor is a very important thing, and that one must protect one's peers from what they might "pick up from the street."

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by dedalus 

You should install Little Snitch, stops applications from ‘calling home’.
You might want to install NetBarrier in order to do ‘full stealth’ browsing.

NetBarrier can prevent apps from calling home as well.

Please note that 'full stealth' browsing mode might interfere with the right behavior of certain websites. I had it enabled and was not able to login to veer dot com website. Once I disabled the full stealth browsing mode I was able to login as expected.

[dedalus]

Originally Posted by tooki 

while I agree that AV software on a Mac is mostly pointless, your insinuation that AV vendors create viruses is pure conspiracy theorist. These days, viruses are written by organized crime, it's all about money. (Unlike the old days, when it was vandalism by individuals.)

Is it, really? Where is the profit for organised crime? As far as I can tell, people do not write viruses for fun, they write them because somebody paid them to do it. Who would pay somebody to write a computer virus? Somebody who has an angle on capitalising on supposedly breachable systems. Who’s that? It’s somebody who can make money off people’s fear of being compromised. So, who is that? It’s Symantec, Intego, and friends.

If you get right down to to it, AV vendors are part of the mob.

[dedalus]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

NetBarrier can prevent apps from calling home as well.

Please note that 'full stealth' browsing mode might interfere with the right behavior of certain websites. I had it enabled and was not able to login to veer dot com website. Once I disabled the full stealth browsing mode I was able to login as expected.

I know. Same thing with SourceForge mirrors, banner blocking, information hiding, referral blocking, and so forth. If you need to use a site that requires you to temporarily let your guard down, you might want to do that, but that should not affect your overall security policy.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by dedalus 

Is it, really? Where is the profit for organised crime? As far as I can tell, people do not write viruses for fun, they write them because somebody paid them to do it. Who would pay somebody to write a computer virus? Somebody who has an angle on capitalising on supposedly breachable systems. Who’s that? It’s somebody who can make money off people’s fear of being compromised. So, who is that? It’s Symantec, Intego, and friends.

If you get right down to to it, AV vendors are part of the mob.

The organized crime angle has more to do with selling what spam collects and developing ways of collecting more of that than anything else. Virus writers are more and more frequently traced to Russia and other poor Eastern European areas. The "payload" of viruses nowadays scours a computer for personal information as well as for email addresses, and delivers these pieces of information to centralized servers that are (you guessed it) also in poor Eastern European areas. Spammers buy hundreds of thousands of email addresses at a time, while credit card scammers buy other kinds of data to use in clearly criminal activities.

Symantec, Trend, Intego and others work closely with law enforcement and national CERTs to protect information and prevent denial of service through network attacks or virus activity. A mayor company being frozen because their networks were compromised would certainly want to prevent that, and the way AV makers work with business is anything but the ransom-like activity you suggest. And please note that the Russians used a cyber attack on Georgia in the late summer of 2008, nearly paralyzing Georgia's armed forces for a time and allowing Russian forces to cake-walk into South Ossetia...how would Symantec profit from a major nation being successfully attacked?

The most ardent "AV makers are the virus writers" adherents are people that simply don't want to admit that the networked nature of our world is also a rather dangerous place. It is dangerous, and antivirus software is only the most obvious way in which businesses, schools and governments deal with attempting to defend against those dangers.

[dedalus]

How is spam‑based data harvesting related to the AV industry? I do not need viruses to get somebody’s information, I need access to their servers’ root accounts. If I wanted to steal your credit card details right now, I would not use a virus, I’d hack your bank.

Incidentally, it was Georgia who initiated an attack upon the South Ossetians (a distinct ethnic group traditionally aligned with Russia for decades), murdering a number of Russian peacekeepers in the process. Georgia is the villain here. You might want to keep your FOXNews propaganda to the P/W Lounge.

[tooki]

Dedalus, can I cordially suggest that you do a little research on the modern virus?

Spam makes money. Organized crime uses viruses to a) harvest email addresses, credit card info, logins, etc. from individuals' PCs, and b) more importantly, uses viruses to make individual PCs act as spam servers and DOS-attack members. There is a lot of money in both those activities.

In the 80s and 90s, viruses were mostly a nuisance, written by pubescent hackers simply to prove their mettle. These days, it's all about money.

Oh and yes, organized crime also steals info directly from banks and whatnot.

And in all fairness, though I find it exceedingly implausible that an AV vendor would actually write or commission viruses, I am more than happy to lambast them for the sensationalist tone they take towards benign security flaws. It galls me how they take a legitimate (but minor, and purely theoretical) exploit and describe it as a horde of mongols waiting outside your door.

[dedalus]

I’m not arguing with any of that.

Why is it so hard to believe that antivirus companies would employ virus writers? It’s no more outlandish than suggesting that pharmaceutical companies create viruses, epidemics and/or panics so they can sell more vaccines, or that arms manufacturers lobby governments to instigate wars. It makes perfect financial sense for them to do it. It’s not like the antivirus companies are some kind of benign charity, they need a world that is gripped by virus panic.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by dedalus 

I’m not arguing with any of that.

Why is it so hard to believe that antivirus companies would employ virus writers? It’s no more outlandish than suggesting that pharmaceutical companies create viruses, epidemics and/or panics so they can sell more vaccines, or that arms manufacturers lobby governments to instigate wars. It makes perfect financial sense for them to do it. It’s not like the antivirus companies are some kind of benign charity, they need a world that is gripped by virus panic.

Why would they? There are so many writers out in the wild that countering their "art" takes an enormous amount of time and resources. Even tiny nuisance viruses cost companies tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity, so every one that gets out into circulation needs a counter that's available fast.

Your suggestion that pharmaceutical companies intentionally "drum up business" by creating either real or potential diseases is also both offensive and libelous. Finally, governments generally don't need any help with finding conflict to start or enter into, so arms makers simply make themselves available-at least in the West...

I suggest you invest in aluminum foil; Reynolds now offers a 100% recycled foil product for those who are interested both in the environment and avoiding mind rays.

[dedalus]

Very funny.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by tooki 

Your school still gets macro viruses?!?

Yes.

Originally Posted by tooki 

Doesn't Word warn you EVERY TIME you open a file with a macro and let you disable the macro?

Yes, but teachers and 13-year-old kids ignore the warning.

Originally Posted by tooki 

I've never seen Word completely block the file or make it read-only.

Word doesn't, the Macro does.

Originally Posted by tooki 

Either way, if you run Office 2008, you are immune to macro viruses, since Office 2008 doesn't support VBA.

Office 2008 licensing is too expensive.

Originally Posted by ghporter 

I used them for years (required by my school) without a single issue or difficulty-except that (logically) they were hard to uninstall when my OS version upgrade outpaced their version upgrades.

I've also used it for years, and when the AntiVirus takes up 90% of your CPU just to tell you how great a job it's doing, I take issue with it. You don't need a gargantuan, animated dialog box to tell me it's scanning something.

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Ole, did you know that Norton AV 10 (for Mac) actually identified Office documents that had "questionable" macros? And that it would work with Office to block the macros' operation?

Yes, so does Sophos; and Sophos does it without killing my computer, without annoying popups, and without gargantuan, animated dialog boxes. It's a little B&W shield in my menu bar. If it ever encounters anything, it pops up a regular dialog box.

More importantly, I can uninstall it.

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Or that since around 2001, all versions of Office have been configured out of the box to block macros by default? It's possible that you're using a corporate-customized version of Word that is set to do stupid stuff, but like tooki, I've never seen the behavior you describe.

Regular site license Word, but despite the number of times telling teachers and students not to run macros, they do it anyway.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

It's not complete rubbish. If you run Office and open Word documents, there's a decent chance of getting a Word Macro. We get them all the time at the school where I work. It's extremely annoying. It turns all your word documents into read-only template files and you can't get any work done.

I thought those were extinct.

I haven't gotten *ANY* MS macro viruses in 10 years, and I have my macro protection turned off because I use macros all the time.

-t

[tooki]

I thought they were extinct, too, simply because I have macro protection turned on and haven't gotten a warning in years, save for the rare document that actually contained an honest-to-goodness macro.

[greatlife]

I've been using Windows ever since I know a computer. I just bought a MacBook (never use or touch it before). All my friends said that I do not need antivirus, firewall and all those security apps on windows. I need suggestion from fellow member Is it safe browsing without all those security apps using my mac.

I feel naked without those apps. do I need one ? and if I do, which one? Thanks.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

Yes, but teachers and 13-year-old kids ignore the warning.
...Office 2008 licensing is too expensive.
...Regular site license Word, but despite the number of times telling teachers and students not to run macros, they do it anyway.

Word (and all of Office) can be custom installed with LOCKED options, including blocking all macros. In fact, it's pretty easy to do with tools that Microsoft provides. The issue is the time and effort (more time) to set up the install and then to actually DO the install. It always works better with a "wipe the drive and install an image" approach.

What things like this come down to is paying a little up front for your IT people to do the job "right," or paying a lot in chunks later on to fix the job after a user boogers it up. Sorry to say this, but money people tend to be very short sighted-especially with taxpayer money.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by greatlife 

I've been using Windows ever since I know a computer. I just bought a MacBook (never use or touch it before). All my friends said that I do not need antivirus, firewall and all those security apps on windows. I need suggestion from fellow member Is it safe browsing without all those security apps using my mac.

I feel naked without those apps. do I need one ? and if I do, which one? Thanks.

You don't need anything that doesn't come with OS X to protect your Mac. The OS X firewall is robust and easy to use. There is still yet to be a truly effective, truly malicious piece of Mac-centric malware loose in the wild; the only really effective ones were all based on user greed driving the user to install them. This though is a very good point to think about: SAFE SURFING and skepticism about "free" stuff that really shouldn't be free are skills and strategies you should always use, no matter what platform you're using.

[greatlife]

is it safe to do online financial transaction such as online banking.

which browser is more secure with mac. safari or firefox ? thanks for all the help.

[Simon]

Both are fine as long as you make sure to use up-to-date versions.

Click on the little lock symbol at the top of the browser window to learn more about the encrypted transfer with your online banking site.