Macs never get viruses

[the-cable-guy]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Yep, but saying that someone should prove that their MAC isn't infected is assuming guilt

the reason that i said that was because they said prove that it isint infected.

---------- Post added at 10:47 ---------- Previous post was at 10:45 ----------

Originally Posted by Damien

No one is 100% secure. However we weight the risk against the practicality of measures to reduce that risk taking into account cost, hassle, and performance.

I have decided that with the low, if any, amount of Mac viruses spreading though the internet and the fact that I am careful with what I download and the existence of my firewall I do not need an anti-virus.

I don't do it too offend people with my risky behaviour or out of a sense of Mac arrogance. It's just the reality that I am very unlikely to get a virus on OSX in the current climate. I will reassess when the state of virus on the Mac changes but for now, I am not installing a AV on my machine to scan for nothing.

fair enough mate & thats your choice as after all its your computer.

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Yep, but saying that someone should prove that their MAC isn't infected is assuming guilt

Small thing but I have seen a lot of people do this in this topic. It's Mac not MAC. Mac is short for Macintosh rather than an acronym

[Kymmy]

Actually it was supposed to be Mcintosh but as usual they wanted someone elses name

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Nope, it just gets off-topic!!!!

Not at all ... Slowcoach said UNIX, not Linux ... and Mac OSX is UNIX, with a pretty GUI on top.

His point goes to the very heart of the issue. I note that you have been careful all along to talk about virus writers targeting Windows rather than OSX machines due to their ubiquity ... I can only hope that you are deliberately choosing your words to draw the important distinction between targeting and infecting.

I could get tooled up and then go and target the nuclear submarines at Faslane*. Does anyone want to rate my chances of getting past the first guardhouse?

*Good morning Echelon. This is a daft illustration in a daft thread on a daft internet forum. Nothing to get excited about.

[Kymmy]

If everything was secure we wouldn't need guards.. and even if we have guards there are many case as to where they fail dramatically..

I used the words as the virii writers have to make a choice as to the target before starting the work.

Chris even in the mid/late's people were screaming that Mac's were safe when a whole bunch of virii came out for windows 3.11. It still didn't stop as I've said before a few of duobooks getting a malicious virii which meant a re-install where I worked support 3rd party companies. (a couple each month out of about 300 users)

Nothing is truly secure especially when the criminal fraterity (and that's were a good proportion of the virii now come from) turn their attention towards a product

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Chris

I could get tooled up and then go and target the nuclear submarines at Faslane*. Does anyone want to rate my chances of getting past the first guardhouse?

From personal experience of the MoD, if driving a white van and waving a shopping list, actually quite high


This thread reminds me of the alleged French attitude to BSE.
We have no BSE
How do you know?
We've never had a case of it.
Do you look for it?
No of course not.
Why not?
We have no BSE

Originally Posted by Xaccers

From personal experience of the MoD, if driving a white van and waving a shopping list, actually quite high


This thread reminds me of the alleged French attitude to BSE.
We have no BSE
How do you know?
We've never had a case of it.
Do you look for it?
No of course not.
Why not?
We have no BSE

People do look for Mac Viruses in the wild though, and have concluded that there are really none spreading.

Originally Posted by Xaccers

This thread reminds me of the alleged French attitude to BSE.
We have no BSE
How do you know?
We've never had a case of it.
Do you look for it?
No of course not.
Why not?
We have no BSE

Actually I think it's more like the British attitude to diseases such as cholera and typhoid. I haven't had a vaccination against either of those for 20-odd years. Does that make me irresponsible towards my own health?

[Raistlin]

I've said it before, I'll say it again (and you'll have to trust me when I say that I speak from a position of some knowledge/experience): ANYBODY who is operating a computer that is a) connected to a network of any sort, or b) shares files/resources in any way with any other computer/processing device, and who believes that they don't need an AV program, other malware detection systems, some sort of firewall, proper patching, and proper user access controls, is either incredibly naive or incredibly irresponsible.

Then consider me irresponsible if you like.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. 10 years virus and AV free, and counting.

Promise you will admit it if it happens though..

[Raistlin]

Originally Posted by Chris

Then consider me irresponsible if you like.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. 10 years virus and AV free, and counting.

So, how many viruses have you unwittingly transferred to others in that time? How many viruses that have had no visible/tangible effect on your Mac has it either harboured or facilitated the spreading of? How many pieces of malware transiting the Interweb have not been caught/stopped because of your stance on security software?

---------- Post added at 18:06 ---------- Previous post was at 18:04 ----------

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Promise you will admit it if it happens though..

That's just it, he'll probably never know

As someone posted earlier, I could go to the trouble of installing software long enough to do a complete sweep, thereby proving the system is clean. But the absolutely tiny amount of malware that can even install itself on OSX simply doesn't justify the effort - hence my analogy with certain vaccinations earlier on. Why get yourself injected against typhoid if you're never going to travel anywhere you can get it?

As for viruses transferred ... what, exactly? And how? jpegs originated on my own camera and edited on my own machine? Word documents originated in NeoOffice in ODT format and saved off as MS .doc? Mpegs created in my copy of iMovie? I'm happy to be educated otherwise, but at the moment my understanding is that none of those poses a credible means of unwittingly transferring any kind of malware to anyone.

You are going to have a very, very hard time convincing me that there is any need to engage the same level of paranoia in keeping my Mac free of nasties as is clearly necessary when managing a Windows-based machine.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Chris

Actually I think it's more like the British attitude to diseases such as cholera and typhoid. I haven't had a vaccination against either of those for 20-odd years. Does that make me irresponsible towards my own health?

Except there are scans for typhoid and cholera.
Gf is actually waiting for blood results back for typhoid at the moment.
Now we could say "hey the chances are so small why check? never had it before so I don't have it" like you suggest, but we'd rather be safe than sorry.

You can claim you've been virus free for 10 years until you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact you're using false logic as you've never looked for infections during those 10 years.

NTL had some servers which were "virus free" except they weren't as you can see of you search el reg.

Originally Posted by Xaccers

Except there are scans for typhoid and cholera.
Gf is actually waiting for blood results back for typhoid at the moment.
Now we could say "hey the chances are so small why check? never had it before so I don't have it" like you suggest, but we'd rather be safe than sorry.

You can claim you've been virus free for 10 years until you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact you're using false logic as you've never looked for infections during those 10 years.

NTL had some servers which were "virus free" except they weren't as you can see of you search el reg.

Presumably your gf has symptoms or other reasons that make it a reasonable, proportionate step to have a typhoid 'scan' ... i.e. I assume she is not getting a test merely because typhoid exists and has the capability of infecting her. It's reasonably rare to catch it even overseas, and incredibly rare to catch it within the UK.

There is nothing false about my logic; the steps I do take to keep my computer clean and working properly are reasonable and proportionate. They stop short of installing and running AV software, but then I reject the idea that seems to underly many of the posts in this thread, that AV software is some sort of bare minimum precaution for any computer regardless of OS.

On the other hand, there's something more than a little wobbly about your own logic I think. I've never had an HIV test. Is it false for me to claim, beyond reasonable doubt, that I am not HIV+?