“Here’s a piece of news you may not know: There are currently no viruses or malware that specifically target Mac OS X lurking ‘in the wild,’ ready to infect your Macintosh. What? You don’t have a Macintosh? Maybe that’s just as well. After all, if lots of people did have Macs, the platform would be much more attractive to the evildoers of the world,” David Coursey writes for eWEEK. “People in the Macintosh community know they are virus-free, but don’t make a big deal about it, lest they attract unwanted attention. So let’s just make this our secret. And the evil-doers who read my columns must likewise promise not to create something new just to prove me wrong. Bad guys: Please follow your existing development roadmap and forget this column exists.”
“How do I know there are no Mac OS X viruses and malware out there? Because the Mac product manager of one of the major security software companies told me so. And when people tell me I don’t need their product, I usually take them at their word,” Coursey writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Coursey explains that Apple doesn’t advertise the Mac platform’s current immunity to viruses “for obvious reasons.” And that Mac OS X is essentially virus-free because “Mac OS X doesn’t generate the tremendous hatred that in some circles surrounds anything Microsoft-related,” because Mac OS X requires that users enter an administrator’s password every time they install software, and because “Mac OS X users are a statistical rounding error” in the grand scheme of things (a touch of the “Security Via Obscurity” myth, but helpful protection nonetheless). Coursey also warns that Mac OS X users should employ virus protection software to avoid passing viruses along to Windows users, joking that sending viruses to Windows users “is not the point of owning a Mac.”
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