Antivirus and firewall for mac

Maccy

Maccy

Maccy

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OK only got my first mac yesterday and the thought of security came to mind earlier.

I know macs aren't as easily prone to getting a virus as a pc, but what precautions should be taken?

And are there any free applications that should be used?
 
No precautions are needed.

There is no virus yet for OS X. You can, however, pass on Windows viruses to other people, although you would have to get the virus from somewhere in the first place.

So basically there is no need.

OS X has a built in firewall, (Apple ---> System Preferences ---> Sharing ---> Firewall) So it may be a good idea to enable that if you haven't already (of course if you have a hardware firewall then there's no need to enable it)

If you are using Windows on your Mac you will still need firewall/spyware/virus software within Windows unfortunatly.
 
It's better than my ex girlfriend in every way possible!

Puts Windows to shame - booting up time, multi-tasking, the design, the fact there's an inbuilt spell checker (even as I'm using Firefox now!)

Will definitely consider an Apple setup when I move into my first home after uni :)
 
If you like the spellchecker you'll probably like the built-in dictionary support (for cocoa apps).

Highlight the word you want to lookup in dictionary, leave on it the mouse cursor and press Ctrl-Apple-D: a popup window will show the dictionary definition, and you have the choice to search more (the "More..." on the bottom-right corner of the popup). :D
 
Ah ok, clever stuff!

Doesn't need to be highlighted - just put the mouse over any word and it seems to work.
 
Justin said:
No precautions are needed.

There is no virus yet for OS X. You can, however, pass on Windows viruses to other people, although you would have to get the virus from somewhere in the first place.

So basically there is no need.

OS X has a built in firewall, (Apple ---> System Preferences ---> Sharing ---> Firewall) So it may be a good idea to enable that if you haven't already (of course if you have a hardware firewall then there's no need to enable it)

If you are using Windows on your Mac you will still need firewall/spyware/virus software within Windows unfortunatly.
Click to expand...


while I agree with no Virus, (symantec think dif) there are trojan's around

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-110217-1331-99

http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/02/macosxleap.html
 
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