Intego Anti-virus and CleanMyMac
Hi,
I have been having problems with slowness which lead me to Etrecheck which has now lead to a couple questions about anti-virus software and/or optimization software. I have both Intego anti-virus and CleanMyMac installed on my Mac Pro 2019. After searching these in the forum it is clear that the Mac specialists out here do not like these applications. Some appear to hate them.
1) With regard to CleanMyMac, if it is causing my slowness I don't have the expertise to argue against the hypothesis but I used it on my older Mac Pro 2009. I bought the software in early 2019 so my Mac was ten years old and when I ran the software it found 774 gigabytes of junk to erase. Yes, 774 gigabytes. My primary drive was almost full and that clean up cleared up about 60% more space. According to the About My Mac menu option, most of those files were classified as “Other”. I don't have a computer science degree so I would not feel comfortable deleting tons of files from an “Other” category. If I don't use CleanMyMac how can I be assured that I will be able to clean up and delete files that are no longer needed?
2) With regard to Intego Anti-virus software, I am already of the belief that it is slowing my Mac. I have been thinking of removing it and after searching for comments here I saw the posts by Linc Davis (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7613914 ). I need to review in more detail, but at the moment the idea of removing the anti-virus concerns me. I do get excel, word and pdf files from other people and just started learning Python so I have found myself downloading libraries etc from coding websites which are not familiar to me. Doing this without some kind of anti-virus makes me feel exposed. Is that concern misplaced?
Also with regard to the firewall, my understanding is that the Apple firewall stops incoming connections but the Intego package also stops outgoing. I prefer to limit the amount of tracking that is done on my activity but also generally thought it was helpful to stop Adobe, Microsoft, Citrix and many others from making outgoing connections every time I turn my Mac on. I guess the feeling by the experts here is that the outgoing connections are not a problem?
Mac Pro, macOS 11.2