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Antivirus - Do you use one?
- Thread starter conamor
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I have never used Antivirus on my Macs in the 12 years I have bought them. Five laptops and two desktops.
Never had any issues. Then again, I run AdBlock, Java blockers and use Safari with Cookies off.
I also don't visit Adult sites, which are the breeding ground for malware.
Never had any issues. Then again, I run AdBlock, Java blockers and use Safari with Cookies off.
I also don't visit Adult sites, which are the breeding ground for malware.
As are “free download” and copyright protected streaming sights. People really could save themselves a lot of trouble, couldn’t they?
After 7 years of using a MacBook Pro, with regret I had to install a antivirus a few day ago, I have the intention of learning Python programming and for that reason I was googling about the best software for that matter, then my screen suddnely was redirected to another website where I was asked to install flash. By the way, I stoped using flash many years ago. I had Malware Bytes installed and it did nothing to stop that, I downloaded an app from the App Store to get rid of malware to no avail. Finally, I installed Avast and it detected and stoped the redirection to those websites which asked to install a new version of Flash. As I mentioned, after all this years that never happened, so I did a clean install and the first thing I installed this time was the anti virus.
Can you explain a little bit more about that? I had an Adblocker installed on Safari at that time, nothing else because I don't want to slow the MacBook Pro.
Thank you.
Sometime a website will open and it will contain malicious code (could be HTML/JS) which usually redirects to malicious web servers. I think they are called WebKit. Avast is quite fast on picking up these while browsing.
Thank you for your answer. Without the use of a anti virus, how is the proper way of removing the malicious code from safari?
To stop this kind of situation I used Firefox with the NoScript Add On which work really good for many years. It's there something similar for safari?
If you manage to get a payload installed on your mac without an AV, honestly, I don't know what you could do since you don't really know that it happened. Viruses on mac are usually easy to spot, as willmtaylor said before it could be a pop-ups..., Flash updates, plugin to play videos... You must avoid these. Mac's just works with a vanilla install
For Safari, I used to have http://jsblocker.toggleable.com/ but I recently had to change my HDD in the iMac so I haven't really reinstalled everything...
If you manage to get a payload installed on your mac without an AV, honestly, I don't know what you could do since you don't really know that it happened. Viruses on mac are usually easy to spot, as willmtaylor said before it could be a pop-ups..., Flash updates, plugin to play videos... You must avoid these. Mac's just works with a vanilla install
For Safari, I used to have http://jsblocker.toggleable.com/ but I recently had to change my HDD in the iMac so I haven't really reinstalled everything...
Thank you for the data, it's very well appreciated.
For those using Malwarebytes, it has moved to a subscription base system ($40.00 a year) with the real time monitoring option.
I used nothing when I had a Mac, and I use nothing on Windows now. Well, occasionally I run Malware Antibytes, but in terms of an always-running AV, no I don't use one. Being cautious is the best defense.
The $40 is to add the full-time monitoring. If you don't care to have that option, then you can continue with the previous on-demand scanning, which remains free to use.Welp. There’s another piece of software I won’t be using now.
I always found them to be terrible resource hogs, though that was way back before OS X. And just last year something got onto my Mini that slowed everything down--a process that was enormous, memory-wise. I ended up wiping the hard drive and re-installing everything. But I consider that to be freak, one-off thing.
Again, no issue with paying for software... developers do deserve to be paid for their work... I've posted many times that I've licensed a lot of software, some of it at relatively high prices... my beef is with the subscription model. Let me decide to license the software one time... then use it as I wish as long as I choose (or as long as it works with the macOS version of my choosing). I will not support the never-ending milking of customers. IMO, no software is worth that cost. Adobe did it with the CC products and now every Tom, Dick and Harry feels entitled to join the money grab.
Finally, apologies for taking this thread off topic, but I feel strongly about the whole subscription model, and someone did bring that up in this thread relative to Malware Bytes.
A manufacturer / developer can sell their product in whichever way they prefer. There's nothing sinister about it.