which antivirus shall I get for my Mac?

I just switched from a PC to a MAC, complete Mac N00b!e here

which Antivirus shall I buy?

Any good and reliable free ones or do you advice me to bite the bullet and purchase one? and if so...which one do you recommend?

Thanks

 

To be honest, I really don't think you need any. I downloaded Avast for Mac the other day just because and did a system sweep. It didn't find anything, and I've used this computer everyday for hours on end for over two years. It also made my system run noticeably slower even when it wasn't doing a sweep.

 

sophos is pretty nice and runs with minimal system resources in the background.

Also, make sure to turn on your firewall as Apple seems to disable it unlike windows to make the computer seem faster? when you set it up. It is under system preferences > security and privacy and the firewall tab.

 

People tend to recommend sophos, I dont use one, however I rarely install any new programs outside of the usual ones: VMs, xcode, adobe CS, better touch tool, hp12c, vlc, chrome, unarchiver, MS office and addium, sometimes I get coda.

just that.

 

Sometimes, the schools or other work places require an AV to be on your system. Plus, I believe someone did mention about how sophos was able to catch macdefender much more any action was taken by apple.

 

The best Anti-Virus when using a Mac: Your common sense.

Don't run any programs that you aren't 100% sure are legit, don't click on random pop-ups, don't be stupid.

 

that incredibly works for every OS

 

The main problem for me comes from using media (USB thumb drives, optical discs, etc.) that has been hooked up to multiple machine. A friend can give me their thumb drive to copy a document over and it will undoubtedly have some malicious content on it. So far all of that has been for Windows only but it would cause issues when taking my Mac online (mainly with my Windows VM) through my university's network.

Sophos has been able to catch everything so far regardless of what OS it was made for. It detected some *.exe file that could never run in OS X but it still reported it as a threat and cleaned it from the thumb drive.

Either way, I don't really see how having one will hurt anything especially since Sophos uses minimal system resources (its taking up 7.9 MB of RAM on my MBA at the moment) while keeping a live monitor on everything. 7.9 MB really isn't all that much to sacrifice for all around performance.

 

thanks! ill get Sophos then

 

Sophos is great, especially if they still have the free version for Mac users. I honestly forget I have it installed.

 

Yup, and not only when using a Mac but any OS really. No software can beat common sense.

But, if you really want virus-protection on Mac, install ClamxAV.
It's an on-demand scanner, so not running in the background constantly scanning, but when needed it's there to check files you don't trust.

 

Here is the link to the Mac Free Version

Download - Sophos Free AntiVirus for Mac

 

I personally don't use one on my Mac and haven't had any issues. At one point I was going to install AVG (what I used on my PC) as a precaution but they didn't have a Mac version so I skipped it.

 

Completely agree. I had no issues throughout years of PC use. My sister, on the other hand, constantly had viruses because she downloaded or clicked anything and everything.

 

This only works if you have zero contact with people who aren't secure. For example if someone sends you an attachment and their computer is infected, or someone on your network got infected, or the USB drive you borrowed was infected and so on.

So basically this only works if your in an underground lab with zero contact with the outside world including Internet, USBs, hard drives, CDs etc. Its true individually it might have worked out, but the percentage wise you are more likely to be infected by quite a bit with zero anti-virus just from communal data.

 

Oops - I wasn't trying to give the impression I used no anti-virus on my PCs. I downloaded tons of stuff on them but was careful about the sources and virus-scanned them before opening (I did use virus scan software on my PC; I wasn't saying I used solely common sense. Sorry if I wasn't clear!).

 

No problem, yeah actually on the other end of the spectrum anti-virus isn't a magical shield that guards you from everything, common sense is very important.