Newbie Mac user.

What’s the current thinking on best s/w for anti-virus and firewall?

Thanks for any help.

Well, the BSD-based OS is not especially known for being vulenrable to many viruses, so an AV product will help kill system resources and may actually make you more at risk. It also comes with an in-built forewall, so you don’t need anything there.

Just enjoy the simplicity.

If you feel the need Sophos is free and very good. Mac malware does exist in the wild but it’s up to you it’s far far less prevalent than it is for Windows.

What’s the current thinking on best s/w for anti-virus and firewall?

Don’t bother!

I haven’t bothered for years and have never suffered with any virus (that I know of) but I had a couple of queries about virus protection from clients who wouldn’t be reassured by the “its not really a big problem” argument so I paid for a copy of bitdefender. It’s mostly in use so I’ve got a response to keep clients happy in the knowledge that I’m taking due care of their files.

For personal use I doubt I would have bothered, It’s flagged up a couple of dodgy emails which I would have spotted anyway but the main thing for me is that it’s barely noticeable in use. It just sits way off in the background doing its thing without noticeably affecting my workflow.

security via obscurity! 😆 It just works!

Totally uneccessary on a Mac IMHO (9 years Mac only for me). Common question from those coming from windows though so nothing personal.

You can take care with certain settings, eg not running unsigned applications but that’s the default setting anyway. Normal care with phishing emails. If you have an iPhone/iPad turn on the two factor authentication for iCloud

Just use the computer

I’ve always used Little Snitch. It’s a network monitor that tells you when apps/processes try to send data in or out of your Mac, which you can then block if you deem appropriate. (obviously a degree of technical knowledge may be required to make that call!)

It’s worth it if you’re tranfering files from other machines. You might be careful but other might not. I use virus barrier which has detected trojuns on external devices that have been used on other people’s machines. No idea if they would have been detected without it but better to be safe.

The mac has a firewall built in so you don’t need firewall software.

it is worthwhile downloading Sophos for mac and turning off the live scanning but using it to scan anything that is on the file system you may have downloaded and aren’t sure of.

wouldn’t bother my arse tbh.

The mac has a firewall built in so you don’t need firewall software.

As does your router.

Viruses are being written for Macs now, but their “role back to a point before it was broken” fixall still works well.

The mac has a firewall built in so you don’t need firewall software.
As does your router.

Which is fine as long as he’s at home…

Which I’d assumed he was, given he said ‘Mac’ and not ‘Macbook’. But it’s a fair point.

Hard to think of many places where he’d be directly connected to the Internet rather than behind a physical router, though using public Wi-Fi there could be a potential threat from inside the network.

Since the new iOS download had loads of viruses – crashing by like nothing else. Sick of it. PayPal account attempted hack. Anyone else experiencing this and what what they did? Got norton antivirus on it already.

iOS 11 had loads of bugs not viruses ?

I don’t use any just Mac and router firewall running, but on the internet use good strong passwords.
Don’t enter your password to install an application unless you know it’s from a good source.

I’ve got IOS11 running fine on my 2009 MacBook with no issues whatsoever. If there is PayPal hacking going on, its hacking of PayPal not your Mac. And anti virus programmes won’t provide any protection against hacking.

I wouldn’t use any but I wouldn’t use any on a PC either.