Do I need anti-virus/firewall

rsteversteve
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Coming over from Windows where obviously you don't venture on the net without both, but which did have good free software to take care of it (AVG Free and ZoneAlarm Free both protected my PC well), I've been happily using my Mac on the net without these products for a while but a friend seemed horrified when I told him. I had a look on amazon for some products and searched for free downloads, but the only product I could find was a Norton package for OSX which cost £80 (expensive and more than an upgrade to Tiger would cost me, plus Norton on Windows has a bad reputation anyway) which included anti-virus but didn't seem to mention a firewall. I can't find any free firewalls or anti-virus for the Mac.



Please can someone honestly tell me, with no pro-Apple or anti-Windows bias (I've already switched to Mac so no need!) is it safe for me to be browsing with no anti-virus or firewall software and if not, do I really need to spend £80 on a program when I could get them for free on Windows? I'm using an iMac G5 with Panther.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    formerlurkerformerlurker Posts: 2,686member
    you have a built-in firewall already. See:

    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...en/mh1042.html
  • Reply 2 of 4
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    You don't need anything. There is no malware in existence for OS X, and therefore these products have nothing to check for anyway, except Windows malware. Norton screws up your system - forget about it.



    Just turn on the built-in firewall (don't really even need that) and that's all.



    Of course, it is trivial to write a Trojan horse for any OS, and if you download an unknown file and run it, Mac OS X will warn you that it is an application, and Mac OS X will also not allow the app to do things to the system without asking for an Admin password.



    So I could mail you an attachment that was a run-only Applescript, and if you clicked it to open it, Mail would put up a dialog saying "XXX is an application. Are you sure that you want to run it?"



    I just tried this by mailing an AppleScript to myself that, when the attachment was double-clicked and Mail's warning was OKd, deleted a file off my Desktop. If the script had tried to delete a system file, OS X would have asked for Admin authorization.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    rsteversteve Posts: 74member
    Thanks it's great to know I have a firewall at least, I'll turn that on right away. If there's no specific Mac viruses I guess I'm OK.



    Thanks all!
  • Reply 4 of 4
    sparhawksparhawk Posts: 134member
    the only other reason for a virus-scanner would be, that received emails containing a virus could be forwarded by you to another windows user. You would have to actively do this of course. But you might not know the email contains a virus. Arriving in a windows enviroment, it would do the damage it was supposed to do of course...

    But i wouldn't install a scanner for that .....
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