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Mac users 'too smug' Over Security?
wild_berry writes "Bill Thompson, one of the BBC's technology commentators and presenter of Go Digital on the BBC World Service, expresses his concerns that Mac users assume their safety in the face of trojans, worms, keyloggers and other malware. As a Mac user he is most concerned about the lack of herd immunity that is needed to stop a few infections becoming an epidemic, fully explained in his column week for the BBC technology site. Is he right, and what actual products exist for OS X that would protect against infections?"
How does the average user protect against the unknown?
When I get my new iMac ('free') I will be adding some extra security to the system. But the average user cannot do what I will be doing.
And as for the anti-virus software outthere, except for dealing with Office viruses, and maybe System 6-9 viruses what is it supposed to protect against? It's snake-oil.
How do i know they even have staff on hand to deal with an outbreak where there hasn't been anything of significance in 5 years. (yes, I heard about issues within the last 5 years, they were not particularly significant as they were risks, not outbreaks.
How many people on Slashdot actually run anti-virus software on their Linux boxes? 5%?
"safer" OS
Safer? I guess, except in the past year Apple released more security and exploit fixes for OSX than Microsoft did for WindowsXP...
So again how is it a safer OS if these exploits existed in the first place?
Go stick you head in the sand until the great Mac worm hits that erases everyone's OSX drives. Then maybe people will realize that NO Operating System is completely safe. PERIOD.
Windows gets a lot of press because 95% of the world are using it, and it truly is targeted a bit more. Think about it, if you were going to write a virus to screw with the world, would you spend time finding a way to infect 5% of the world's computers or the other 95%?