When I bought my G4 in '01 I got Norton Systemworks for Mac, which includes Norton Utilities, Antivirus, Spring Cleaning, and Retrospect Express Backup.

I use Retrospect and Spring Cleaning every once in a while, and Utilities a little more often. I have Antivirus enabled most of the time but it has never detected any virii on my system.

Mac virii are about as common as five-legged chickens or three-headed snakes.

While there may be more virii for OSX than Mac Classic their number is still quite negligible compared to Windows OSs. Anything Apple recommends will be more than sufficent.

I am using Mac OS 10.3.9 since December, and haven't had any anti-virus applications on my Mac. Apple recommends Virex, but some folks were having problems with it. However, these problems cuadruple for some with the use of Norton Aintivirus.

I plan to have Virex on my G5 in the near future, but i will wait i=until they have solved some small conflict issues.

You can set-up the built-in Firewall, which is found in the "Sharing" folder under System Preferences. I use a router and DSL modem, plus the built in Firewall. OS X makes it more difficult for a virus to get in, but a virus that may not work on a Mac can still be passed to a PC.

I agree with Ray in that I would not use Norton on OSX. They have really gone downhill in the last few years.

I have Norton on my G4 running OS 10.3. I didn't know that could cause problems. What are the problems which it can cause?

If Norton has already not caused any problems with your OS, I would leave it alone. If you ask at the Apple Forums, nine out of ten will tell you not to use Norton Antivirus with OS X. I do use it with OS 9, but not with OS 10.3.9 and 10.4.

I haven't used anything at all for years now, either at home or at work. We have 300 Macs at work and haven't seen a single virus attack since I can't remember when. It really is a non-issue. On the other hand, we clean out PCs all the time at work. We only have about 100 PCs, but at least once every day or so we are cleaning out spyware or viri or something on at least one of them. We easily spend two to three times as much effort supporting the stupid PCs as we do the all the Macs.

What's a Virus?

Not a single issue since 1994 at home or work (which has a few hundred macs) and we have no protection software installed..

The only people that like PC's at my office are those that work in Tech Support - can you say job security.

Apple released a security update this week, so it's not impervious.

Although certainly not up there with Windows issues, it's growing as the hackers move to other systems/platforms/browsers for *fun and profit*... :-)

TJ

There are many Mac virii, worms, trojans, macro virii, autostart virii, and other threats. No operating system is immune, not Windows, not Macintosh, not Linux. A virus can wreak just as much havoc on another operating system.

While there are fewer virii for lesser-used operating systems like the Mac, it's foolish to pretend they don't exist and not to take precautions against them.

The first virus I ever personally encountered was one called "Swiss" on my original 1984 128Mb Mac.

The current Mac operating system is Unix based, it is basically a very nice user interfaced Unix system. As such it is very difficult to write anything more than a simple virus that will infect only one level of a single program. The use of the super-administrator effectively stops the virus from doing a system wide attack.

Most Mac viruses were written for prior operating systems NOT based on Unix. Even those were fairly rare and harmless, usually worms. To say there are many threats to the Mac is huge exaggeration, especially in comparison to what Windows sees in way of virus attacks.

Apple does release security updates. They are primarily to close small theoretical holes in the system and make the OS as secure as possible. No actual virus has ever been reported penetrating those holes.

One argument is that Mac's represent a low percentage of computer uses and hackers only go after the dominant Windows platform. However Hackers are out for glory and what could be more glorious than to write the first virus which brings down the Mac? A system that has been untouchable since the introduction of OS-X nearly five years ago. I believe that if they could - they would.

This is not to say there won't be a successful attack on the Mac in the future, anything is possible although it is unlikely. I'm not going to lose sleep in the meantime.

i have 2 macs (2002) and never bought virus protection. every single person that asks about virus protection, new computer, wireless networking...i profusely spiel on the mac. beauty, efficiency, reliability (stolen fm stk blog).

Certainly, the threat level is far lower for a Macintosh. Still, my Symantec antivirus for the Mac lists over 70,000 virus definitions (of course, many are for older versions of the operating system than OSX Tiger, and the list also include macro virii and cross-platform virii, both of which Macs and machines on other platforms can be susceptible to). As far as I can tell from the Symantec definitions, the list of OSX-specific virii is very small, only 40 or so for Tiger.

There are virii affecting Linux and other systems based in part on Unix as well.

You can refuse to believe in the ocean, but if you get in it, you're going to get wet.

Of course, if your data is unimportant, no need for any protection. I value my time, and keep up-to-date protection on both my Windows and Mac machines.

Spewey, in answer to the OP, are you then recommending the Symantec antivirus for the Mac? Or is there another that you would recommend?

Yes, I like Symantec software, but there are a number of other makers of excellent antivirus software for the Mac as well. Symantec software is pricey, but it updates automatically and new definitions appear quickly. I have no experience with the others.