How To Protect Your Mac From Malware

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost. com. Here's a quick guide to protecting your Mac from malware. 

Protecting your Mac from malware is relatively simple as long as you follow three rules. The first rule is by far the most important. Don't download software from sources you shouldn't trust. Notice the emphasis here on is on SOURCES. You should, of course, trust the app itself either by its reputation or by researching it. But what's more important is to trust the source. Even if it is a good app if you're not downloading it from The App Store or directly from the developer or publisher of that app you could be getting malware instead. Or perhaps getting the real app but with malware coming along for the ride. A lot of people mistakenly think that malware comes from visiting a webpage or just viewing an email. When in fact it really has to come from you downloading and installing an app. To get malware on a Mac you have to go through at least three steps. You've got to download that software. You've got to run it, and then you're going to get asked permission at that point and you have to approve it. 

For instance, you may get a simple dialogue like this that's asking you whether or not you want to run this app. This is a safety measure to get you to look at what you're doing before you complete that step. Or if the app you downloaded is actually something that is going to install something else then you're going to have to approve it there as well, usually using your password or touch ID. So even if you've made a mistake of downloading malware and you've made the further mistake of running it, it still has to go through this third step of approval from you before it actually does anything to your Mac. 

Most Mac users can avoid malware completely by simply following the rule of only getting software from Apple's App Store. If you need to go outside The App Store to download some software directly from a developer or publisher seek the advice of an expert if you're unsure about the app and the source of the download. 

Now rule #2 is very simple. Keep your Mac updated. Updates often include security fixes. Even if it doesn't say it includes a security fix every time an app is updated it uses the latest building blocks for that app which often include security fixes deep down. There are three types of updates you should look for. One, of course, is macOS System updates. But there are also security updates as well. These are little installs that don't change the number and are only about security. In addition it's important to remember that everything you run on your Mac should be updated as well.  For updating macOS you have this in System Settings, General, Software Update, and there are switches there that you can turn On to make it automatic. Also, in The App Store app if you go to Settings, Automatic Updates, you can get automatic updates for the apps there, the ones you download from The App Store. 

For apps that you've downloaded outside The App Store a lot of them will have settings in them to look for or automatically updates for those apps as well. 

Now while rule #1 is the most important and rule #2 is pretty easy, rule #3 actually takes some effort. You've got to have a good backup for your data. Even if something happens to your Mac you don't really care about the operating system or any of your apps. It's easy to restore your Mac and get the apps back. The real thing of value that you have is your own data. Your documents. The book you've been writing. The photos you've been taking. Everything you've downloaded and want to save. The easiest way to back things up is to simply get an external hard drive, plug it in, and use Time Machine, the built-in backup software from macOS. You can also use an online backup which is great because then your backup and the original aren't at the same location. If you really want to do it right have both! Note that iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos are not really a backup solution. But they are better than nothing. They won't protect you in a lot of situations like if you change something or delete something. You can't usually go back and get back what you've lost. But you can with Time Machine or a good online backup. But they are better than nothing and if your situation doesn't allow you to use Time Machine or an online backup for whatever reason at least having your data stored in iCloud offers a little bit of protection. 

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So by following those three rules you are pretty well protected against malware on your Mac. But you may still have some more questions. The biggest question I get is, do you need to install anti-malware software? The answer is No, you don't need to install anything from any third-party on your Mac. Why? Well, because you already have anti-malware software on your Mac. It's built into macOS. It just runs quietly like it should. A lot of the third party apps, they display all sorts of readouts and logs and everything because they need to justify their existence. They need to show you that they're doing something. macOS doesn't need to do that. So, it just protects you agains malware quietly in the background so everybody using macOS is actually already using anti-malware software. It's just built-in. 

In fact installing a third party anti-malware app could have downsides. I've seen plenty of cases where people's Macs have been slowed down by such apps. Also, they produce tons of false positives. They have to justify their existence, justify their subscription fee so they're going to show you all sorts of things that are warnings or cautions that aren't really malware. Then historically a lot of anti-malware apps have actually been malware themselves. I'm not saying they are all bad. I'm sure there are some that do a decent job. But you already have the protection you need with XProtect, as part of macOS. Do note that you're going to see a lot of videos and read a lot of blog posts telling you to install one anti-malware app or another. But much of the time that people telling you that are actually getting paid to push that product. 

Another common this is for people to panic over something that's not malware. For instance, I often get people who are experiencing a bug or problem with their Mac and they immediately jump to the conclusion that it's some kind of malware. You can go to a webpage and a webpage can display anything to you, including something that looks like a dialogue box or a warning that's coming from your Mac instead of the webpage. But it is just either an ad or some graphic overlaying the webpage that's just trying to trick you into clicking or downloading something. 

Another thing people mistake for malware is when a webpage asks you for permission to send you notifications. If you accidentally say yes to that then you may start to get notification, sometimes sending you warnings or making you think that you've got something installed on your Mac you shouldn't have. Like, for instance, I generated this example right here. You can see I was able to make the notification say anything I want it to. If you're seeing this kind of notification just simply go to Safari, Settings, websites, and look for Notifications on the left. You should find the offending website listed there and just deny it from sending you notifications like that in the future. If you use Chrome or Firefox there are similar settings there as well. 

Sometimes people also install browser extensions which are isolated to the browser. But they can do things like sending you to the wrong site after using a search engine or displaying ads where ads shouldn't be. So it is always good to check in your Browser Extensions, no matter which browser you're using, and see if there is anything there that you don't recognize or you don't need. 

Now if you want to go beyond the three rules I mentioned earlier the one thing you can do is stay informed. If a major threat were to come to macOS the tech news sites are going to be all over it. They love it when something goes wrong in the Apple ecosystem. So you'll always fine articles about it there. But a lot of times they're click bait. So look for multiple sources for something and recognize when something really doesn't affect you, like when there's some sort of malware out there, but you needed to go to a certain site and download a certain app.

Now one last thing. While protecting your Mac from malware is indeed very important it's not the major threat out there right now. You should be far more concerned about social engineering and phishing. Getting emails, text messages, even phone calls from people trying to trick you. That's a much more common threat today than malware. Of course there are tons of other scams out there that you need to be worried about more than malware. So protect your Mac from malware but also remember to protect yourself from these more common threats. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.