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Other Malware (?) Besides Viruses

I know that Macs have an extremely low incidence of viruses. However, if I have a Mac, how can I protect my computer from spyware, adware, trojan horses, and other non-virus malware (is that the right term for the above things?)? Is it necessary to have some sort of protection software?
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Matt

Comments: One Response to “Other Malware (?) Besides Viruses”

    13 years ago

    I preach three things:
    1. Keep your Mac up-to-date. Use the latest OS that your hardware supports and check to make sure Software Update is keeping OS X and applications like Safari and iTunes up-to-date. This is true for Windows users too. Windows 7 with all patches is pretty secure, but there are a lot of people still using Windows XP unpatched.
    2. Only download from sites you trust. This is important when it comes to protecting yourself against trojans. You have to download and install software to get a trojan, so the weakest link in protecting yourself from them is you. The only notable Mac trojan of the last few years was a free pirated version of iWork. It was easy to see that it was a "too good to be true" deal and that the sites were not to be trusted. And for the most part Mac users did see that, which is why the trojan didn't do much damage.
    3. Stay informed. If a big Mac virus or trojan comes around in the future, you can bet the tech media will be all over it. They're just waiting for a story like that, believe me. By checking in with Mac news sites, or podcasts and blogs like MacMost, you are already doing this. If there was a danger, you can bet I'd be tweeting and posting to Facebook about it, as well as mentioning it on the news section of the site.

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