Antivirus Software for iMac?

[DougY]

What is the current trend regarding antivirus for the iMac? How many of you are using it? If you do use it, which one are you using?

 

[cjmillsnun]

I doubt many use anti-virus on the Mac. The reason is that there are no viruses for current versions of OS X in the strict sense of the term.

There are some trojans (the number can be counted on one hand) and a very small amount of other malware. Most require admin permissions.

EDIT: I don't use any antivirus programs or malware programs on OS X. I do however run Windows Security Essentials on my Parallels W7 partition.

 

[powerbook911]

What is the current trend regarding antivirus for the iMac? How many of you are using it? If you do use it, which one are you using?

I do not use it on any Mac, nor have family install it, when i gave them a Mac.

if you run antivirus on your Mac, the *best* you could hope for is basically keeping from passing on a virus to a Windows computer or something, and that would be a complex scenario anyway.

The virus programs you can run for Mac, are going to find some Windows viruses, but there are so few from Mac, they probably don't even have any Mac ones in the registry it uses to scan your system. It's pretty much pointless.

Just don't enter your admin password unless you know it's something you want to do, installing something or whatnot.

 

[old-wiz]

4 years with macs, never used antivirus. No extant viruses for Macs. I am careful with what I download and install; as mentioned above, a Trojan is a possibility, but it's usually associated with downloading cracked software and then installing it.

 

[Hmac]

No antivirus here either. No malware protection of any kind, other than common sense.

 

[neenja]

i work with other windows machines along with a bootcamp partition on my mbp.

im shocked no one even suggested an antivirus for the poor op.

ClamXav seems to be the most popular of the bunch, and its also free:

http://www.clamxav.com/

 

[ziggyonice]

What is the current trend regarding antivirus for the iMac? How many of you are using it? If you do use it, which one are you using?

This is a very common question on MacRumors. The general consensus is that you don't need it because you won't use it. Viruses aren't a problem on a Mac, like they are on PCs.

(This is bound to be a topic that will become many, many pages long. I'd stop reading here, if I were you and just heed our advice )

 

[cmaier]

I don't use it. Never heard of an actual Mac virus. Trojans, sure, but I don't download random stuff.

 

[MacHamster68]

there are antivirus programs for osx available , dont know any but they exist
but i never used one and i even dont know anybody using one
as its not windows you will have greater chance winning in the lottery without getting a lottery ticket then catching a virus on a mac

 

[Eraserhead]

VirusBarrier X is pretty good.

 

[spencers]

Never, in my 20+ years of owning a Mac, have I ever used antivirus software.