Tag: "now-officially"

Macs’ Virus Immunity is Reaching Its Expiration Date

I got an email today from some friends who run a Bay Area IT consultancy. They deal almost exclusively in the PC trade but are Mac savvy themselves, so I was startled a bit by the subject line for their monthly Good News / Bad News newsletter: Two Very Bad Mac OSX Viruses . Of course, I knew from chatter over the summer and from more recent conversation that the days of Macs being impervious to viruses and malware are probably numbered and sure enough, even Apple Support now officially recommends users install antivirus protection on Mac systems: Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult. The Apple knowledge base article goes on to recommend programs from Intego , Symantec/Norton and McAfee, all of which are commercially licensed products. My consulting friends recommended iAntivirus , which is a free program, and said, “We have never used it but reviewers say it is good for being a free program. Download and use all free software with caution!” Another free Mac virus checker (though the developer gratefully accepts all donations) is ClamXav , an updated version of which was released on Monday; the program gets 4.25 stars at Mac Update. So, is that it