mac security. clamxav and non admin accounts

Hello,

After a few years away I have recently moved back to mac and have a macbook.

One of the things I am looking at is security and whether I need a virus guard or firewall and from searching the archives the general consensus seems to be no I don't. I have however downloaded clamxav as it was free and given that a go. I have also read some of the recommendations re creating a non admin account to use. I have a couple of questions:

- For those who have used clamav how long does a scan take? I ran it for an hour last night and it did not complete so I had to abort the scan. It also seemed to be cycling through the same files over and over with no indication as to the overall progress but this could have been my imagination.

- Since buying my mac I have installed a lot of software including lightroom, parallels, office etc. How feasible is it to create a non admin account without having to reinstall stuff?

- What exactly does an admin account allow that a non-admin ones doesn't? i.e. what functionality will I lose?

- Are there any 3rd party firewalls around? from what I understand the osx one does not restrict outgoing traffic.

Thanks

Neil

 

You are using an admin user now? It only has limited rights by default too and when ever the admin needs to make use of admin rights it asks you to input your password. If you use a limit user you cant input the users password but need to input the admins login and password. Little or no differance in my opinion.

If you dont want to reinstall things then just create another admin account. Login as the new admin and take admin rights away from the old admin user. Then you have a limit account and dont have to reinstall anything.

 

That was what I thought but as a relative mac novice I thought I may be missing something.

 

I too got clam av when I first got my macbook, but to be honest it doesn't really do much. I tried it on a few test files that were easily picked up on my pc by avg free. Clam said they were fine, so I lost faith in its ability to work and thus dont use it anymore. In fact I dont use any anti-virus on my mac at all. And so far after 10months not one problem.
a

 

Turn on the Firewall. You probably won't be utilizing it anyways but have it on, it doesn't hurt. Just search Firewall in System Preferences.

I have ClamXaV but I never use it. I don't find it necessary. There's no viruses for the Mac in the wild right now, so I see no purpose. I've had no problems with my Mac.

It doesn't hurt to use a non-admin account for regular tasks, but its not necessary. I use an admin account. Because every time you want to install something, Apple will prompt you to type in the password anyways, even on an admin account.