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wchong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
364
0
Miami, Fl
well i was going through the internet and u know how some pop ups "scan" your computer and tell you that you have "X" amount of viral infections.

well i was told by this one pop up that i had 45 infections. do i really need an anti-virus or not?

mind you, i have only downloaded trusted programs and some music.
 

Zwhaler

macrumors 604
Jun 10, 2006
7,267
1,965
What is funny is that most of the programs that claim to remove viruses that are pop up ads and are kind of bogus, they will claim your machine has 50 or so "viruses" when in reality it has none. They just lie and say that so you will buy their product.
 

Chundles

macrumors G5
Jul 4, 2005
12,037
493
wchong said:
well i was going through the internet and u know how some pop ups "scan" your computer and tell you that you have "X" amount of viral infections.

well i was told by this one pop up that i had 45 infections. do i really need an anti-virus or not?

mind you, i have only downloaded trusted programs and some music.

What? Are you using Windows?

Anything a pop-up tells you is total bollocks - they get gullible people with no knowledge of computers to click on a link and download an "anti-virus" program that installs loads of spyware on your system.

If you have a Mac, for god's sake turn on blocking of pop-ups and remember that there are no Mac viruses or spyware.
 

wchong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
364
0
Miami, Fl
lol i'm using a mac. that's why i thought it was weird.

well i did turn on pop up blocker. i don't know why those pop ups aren't blocked.

could it be safari being all stupid. o well. at least i'm glad that this mac cant' get infected :D

thanks


btw, if i download a virus and run it, what's going to happen? maybe mac doesn't open .exe files
 

Zwhaler

macrumors 604
Jun 10, 2006
7,267
1,965
wchong said:
btw, if i download a virus and run it, what's going to happen? maybe mac doesn't open .exe files

Haha my friend told me when he was downloading something on limewire (don't even bother to post the pirate song) that a little window in OSX came up and said

"This file contains a virus. What would you like to do?" And it said "Continue downloading anyway" or "Move virus to trash". Hella funny.
 

wchong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
364
0
Miami, Fl
Zwhaler said:
Haha my friend told me when he was downloading something on limewire (don't even bother to post the pirate song) that a little window in OSX came up and said

"This file contains a virus. What would you like to do?" And it said "Continue downloading anyway" or "Move virus to trash". Hella funny.


i didn't know mac osx had a virus scanner
 

Chundles

macrumors G5
Jul 4, 2005
12,037
493
wchong said:
i didn't know mac osx had a virus scanner

It doesn't.

The guy's friend most likely saw the Limewire notification that the file he was downloading was corrupted and when relating the story replaced "The file you are downloading is corrupt" with "The file you are downloading is infected" despite the fact that the two words don't mean the same thing.

It's a notification built-in to Limewire, not OSX.
 

Zwhaler

macrumors 604
Jun 10, 2006
7,267
1,965
Well then my friend is full of it. Either that or it was a message from limewire rather than OSX, I just assumed.
 

beatsme

macrumors 65816
Oct 6, 2005
1,204
2
wchong said:
btw, if i download a virus and run it, what's going to happen? maybe mac doesn't open .exe files

just be careful if you're running Bootcamp/XP. It's likely that an .exe virus that resides on the Mac partition won't get through the partition wall, but you never know.
 

wchong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
364
0
Miami, Fl
beatsme said:
just be careful if you're running Bootcamp/XP. It's likely that an .exe virus that resides on the Mac partition won't get through the partition wall, but you never know.


lol that'd be hilarious. the virus really wants to infect the windows partition huh?
 

thegreatluke

macrumors 6502a
Dec 29, 2005
649
0
Earth
If you were running Mac OS X, it wouldn't do anything.

You'd need to be able to run it for it to do anything, and even if one ran somehow (first Mac virus maybe in twenty years?) it would most likely do nothing to other partitions.
 

beatsme

macrumors 65816
Oct 6, 2005
1,204
2
thegreatluke said:
If you were running Mac OS X, it wouldn't do anything.

You'd need to be able to run it for it to do anything, and even if one ran somehow (first Mac virus maybe in twenty years?) it would most likely do nothing to other partitions.

what I'm getting at is if XP is running on another partition and it somehow issues a call across the partition wall, the virus could wind up launching itself on the XP partition. It's unlikely, but you never can be too careful
 

wchong

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
364
0
Miami, Fl
beatsme said:
what I'm getting at is if XP is running on another partition and it somehow issues a call across the partition wall, the virus could wind up launching itself on the XP partition. It's unlikely, but you never can be too careful

viruses nowadays, getting so sophisticated... bad boy! tsk tsk tsk...
 
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