[G4] av software

[Al Poulin]

On Jul 19, 2005, at 5:27 PM, dapper dan wrote:

> ive heard lots of different info on mac and virus protection.do i need 
> it?if so,what is the best? dont want to spend any extra money i dont 
> need but i love this computer and want to keep it running well.

As for Norton Antivirus in the OS X environment, there has been little 
value in running it on personal, home oriented Macs because there is 
nothing for it to report to you as being threatening or malicious.  It 
may, however, alert you to the possibility that you receive an e-mail 
attachment that could damage a non-Mac PC if you happened to pass it 
along to a PC user.  However, being a good samaritan for this purpose 
is kind of useless.  That PC user has much more to worry about than the 
off chance of getting bad stuff from you.  Also, if you receive 
Microsoft Word files which contain macros, there is the threat of 
viruses there.  Some folks, especially in critical, mission oriented 
businesses, like to run Antivirus or Virex just in case some virus, 
worm, or other malware suddenly appears unannounced some dark night in 
the future.  Because managing anti-virus software and their routine 
reports objecting to purely benign behavior of the Mac OS is something 
of a pain in the face of non-existant threat, I just do not bother.  
Macworld magazine ran a nice set of articles on Macintosh security in 
the March 2005 issue; this material should now be available at their 
web site.  The overall title was:  "Mac Security: Fact and Fiction."

Al Poulin
Anger, hate, and revenge are for the devil, forgiveness is for God, 
proactive self-defense is for the rest of us.