Sorry if this seems so lame to some of you. I just bought a 20'' imac 2 months ago. I now have satelite internet. I currently have no aftermarket firewalls or antivirus, mostly because I understood macs are so safe. Well, am I really that safe with this higher speed internet (than dial-up)?? Thanks much for any good response. I love my mac and want to stay safe while surfing.
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New to mac. Any online threats from sat. internet?
- Thread starter macabi
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Sorry if this seems so lame to some of you. I just bought a 20'' imac 2 months ago. I now have satelite internet. I currently have no aftermarket firewalls or antivirus, mostly because I understood macs are so safe. Well, am I really that safe with this higher speed internet (than dial-up)?? Thanks much for any good response. I love my mac and want to stay safe while surfing.
Just don't give your password to install anything that you don't know what it is.
What I'm saying is, if something you've opened asks for your password, and you can't explicitly remember downloading it, don't do it.
What I'm saying is, if something you've opened asks for your password, and you can't explicitly remember downloading it, don't do it.
Macs do get some viruses, but they are super rare and super nothing-ness. I've had two minor viruses on my Mac over 3 or 4 years, and they just slowed things a little or goofed up odd data on 2 or 3 files. If you ever run across a Mac virus that is truly destructive I would be shocked. I use no special virus programs, but run Norton every few months to make sure nothing is lurking.
Fixed.
Is that how it goes?
I've never looked into how viruses can affect Mac OS.
I just check every so often... just incase.
Is that how it goes?
I've never looked into how viruses can affect Mac OS.
A virus is defined as being self-executing, while a trojan requires the end-user to install it.
There aren't any viruses for OS X, but there are some trojans (as evidenced by the recent rash of iWork and CS4 torrents), which is why we prompted him to never give his password to a program he couldn't remember.
As others have said ... biggest threat to mac right now is from people downloading software illegally from Torrents (iWork09 and CS4) ... if you had the legit version you would have to enter password so the installers have been compromised to embed a trojan into the install code and setup root processes that will make your mac a bot zombie