Virii on Mac OS X vs. Windows XP

tontontonton
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
How have you fared so far with virii, worms, malware, etc.



Mods: I forgot to check the "multiple selections" button. Can you help? And maybe add the choices "I have Win XP and have never had a virus/worm" and "I have Mac OS X and have never had a virus/worm"?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    merovingianmerovingian Posts: 436member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    How have you fared so far with virii, worms, malware, etc.



    Mods: I forgot to check the "multiple selections" button. Can you help? And maybe add the choices "I have Win XP and have never had a virus/worm" and "I have Mac OS X and have never had a virus/worm"?



    Well, I've never used XP in my life, and there are no viruses for OS X, so if the option was there, I would select:



    I have never spent money to protect my system, and I have never lost data due to worms/viruses on any system.



    Anyhoo... m.
  • Reply 2 of 18
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    tonton just make a new thread
  • Reply 3 of 18
    resres Posts: 711member
    You don't have an choice for people like me: I have never spent money to protect my computers, XP or OSX, and I have never lost data or had any other problems due to worms/viruses on any of my systems.
  • Reply 4 of 18
    cakecake Posts: 1,010member
    It's viruses. Not virii or viri - simply viruses.
  • Reply 5 of 18
    averagezenaveragezen Posts: 37member
    same need the choice for no cash spent for protection.



    zen
  • Reply 6 of 18
    k squaredk squared Posts: 608member
    I've never had an infection under XP, but have had a few under 2000.
  • Reply 7 of 18
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    virii



    As Eugene once said, fake latinizing doesn't make you cool.
  • Reply 8 of 18
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Yes I know. I guess programmers can't speak English just C++



    This poll is flawed; you should make one with the checkboxes since I have had to: Reinstall XP, lose data due to viruses on XP, had a virus on XP, and spent money (indirectly, through freakin tuition) to protect against XP viruses.



    And there are no OS X viruses.
  • Reply 9 of 18
    randycat99randycat99 Posts: 1,919member
    I'd like to hear more from those above who are saying they have never had a virus on XP. Did you configure your PC in a particular way to achieve this? If so, what?
  • Reply 10 of 18
    kotatsukotatsu Posts: 1,010member
    When I built my PC, a nice little Shuttle XPC, I installed Windows XP on it. I then plugged it into the cable modem, and at this point is was completely unprotected.



    Within 10 minutes (no joke) it had the MS Blast thing on it. If anyone remembers that joyful little program it would shut the PC down automatically after a few minutes of use. So you have to be very quick to find the Norton app that kills it, before it shuts the PC down again.



    First thing I installed was a firewall, then virus killer. I now have two different pop up stoppers (neither of which works 100%, even when they're on together) spam filtering software, and I run Adaware & Spybot Search and Destroy at least once a week.



    PC life is a pain. I don't have a Mac yet. How are there no viruses for Mac OS X? Surely someone has written one!
  • Reply 11 of 18
    ludwigvanludwigvan Posts: 458member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Cake

    It's viruses. Not virii or viri - simply viruses.



    Some background poop on this little controversy.
  • Reply 12 of 18
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by kotatsu

    PC life is a pain. I don't have a Mac yet. How are there no viruses for Mac OS X? Surely someone has written one!



    It's only been, what... three or four years since OS X came out? Still none.



    Whereas, the first major security hole/virus/worm/trojan for XP SP2 was posted in 6 days.
  • Reply 13 of 18
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by LudwigVan

    Some background poop on this little controversy.





    Oooh... contains a nice candidate for new signature file:



    Quote:

    "Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas,'' which means freely translated:

    ``Despite your lack of knowledge, still appreciated.''



  • Reply 14 of 18
    pbg4 dudepbg4 dude Posts: 1,611member
    I only use Win2K on my home PC, and while I've had a virus or 2, none of them caused me data loss, only time loss as I hunted down the offending files and destroyed them photon by photon. I've never had XP installed on any PC that I've worked with.



    So far I haven't had any virus issues with OS X, and very few (<5) kernel panics since I started using OS X. Started using OS X on 3/24/01 and haven't looked back.



    Now I'm on a waiting list for a 20" iMac G5 so I can go all Mac at home.
  • Reply 15 of 18
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Just to continue on the "no way!" track re: OS X and viruses, there have been vulnerabilities noted, and there was one proof of concept for a particular vulnerability, but so far there has never been an actual piece of malware to take advantage of any such vulnerabilites. Apple has usually posted fixes within a few days of these weaknesses coming to light anyway. The weaknesses are usually in some open source piece of the OS. One exception was of course the first-run and scripting vulnerability WRT application launches and the Help viewer. That was fixed after a few weeks of planning and was an OS X-specific issue, though it's a type of issue is not exclusive of Macs. Anyway, the most I've had to worry about on a Mac is tracking cookies.



    I've just spent this morning removing over 600 pieces of malware from my work PC, most of which were in other user accounts on the system. (That number includes relatively innocuous things like tracking cookies, not 600 actual viruses.) This is the first time I've ever had this much trouble with a PC, and I can't imagine that people have to put up with this all the time. It just can't be that bad, but it sure is annoying when it happens.
  • Reply 16 of 18
    vox barbaravox barbara Posts: 2,021member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    As Eugene once said, fake latinizing doesn't make you cool.



    This is the right answer in the right for(u)m.
  • Reply 17 of 18
    kotatsukotatsu Posts: 1,010member
    Surely Mac OS X isn't safe from tracking cookies?



    What no Gator on Mac? You guys are missing out!
  • Reply 18 of 18
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    It's easy enough to avoid them for the most part (just allow cookies that only return to the original server, and you miss about 2/3 of them), and while Safari only has rudimentary cookie control, other browsers like OmniWeb and Firefox have much closer control over these things.



    And really, if that's turns out to be a big concern on the Mac side, well, things could certainly be worse!
Sign In or Register to comment.