Antivirus for Mac and iOS and VPN necessity

The best, for all, is none. Just keep your devices up to date with software releases.

MacBooks are extremely secure, downloading a VPN may even weaken the security and firewalls Apple has in place since it overrides the configurations and replaced it with THERE version of security, apple uses military grade encryption using a 256-bit key, including bank grade security, and even better, it comes free and built into the device via the purchase of your apple product, its a waste of money to invest in a VPN and if it's free, it will definitely steal your data and sell it to third parties

dunlewey wrote:

What is the best antivirus for Mac & IOS? Is VPN necessary?

Do not install third party apps that claim to clean, protect, boost performance, etc. Such apps are not needed and they use system resources while providing no benefit. And they may cause problems.

MacOS shares a lot of the lock-down mechanisms developed for the iPhone. Applications are all sand-boxed with a list of the resources they require, and they cannot ask for anything outside their sandbox without crashing. Signed Applications are checked that they are from legitimate Developers, and Notarized Applications are delivered with the assurance that they have NOT been modified since their release by the Developer.

From MacOS 11 Big Sur onward, the system is on a Separate, cryptographically—signed ‘sealed System Volume’. The Mac runs off read-only snapshots of this volume, which is not writeable using ordinary means. Any unauthorized changes to the crypto-signed volume are very quickly detected and you are alerted.

So you could store just about every malware known to mankind on your Mac, and your Mac would not get infected spontaneously. Scanning for virus-like patterns might make you feel a little better now, but non-stop scanning is outdated nonsense, and a tremendous waste of resources.

Nothing can become Executable Unless/Until you supply your Admin password to "make it so".

Effective defenses against malware and ot… - Apple Community

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8841

VPN:

A virtual private network, or VPN, is a private connection over the Internet from a device to a specific network.  VPN technology is widely used in corporate environments. If you need to be "present" on an institutional network, a VPN is a great tool for accomplishing this. It is generally issued and controlled by the institution.

Almost all other uses are a SCAM. There is generally no need for you to have a private (and almost always MUCH slower) connection to a VPN vendor's Network, except to make it easier for them to harvest your data to sell. If you are behind a Router you control or Trust, there is NO security advantage whatsoever in using a VPN. Your connections are already encrypted in most cases.

If VPN vendors just stopped there, it would be bad. But many of these packages also insist on scanning all your files, non-stop, -- nominally looking for viruses, but who knows for sure what data they are harvesting. Their non-stop file reading punishes your computer's performance in the process.

Some also break into your other secure connections so they can be FIRST to examine your data, often leaving your Mac MORE vulnerable to attack.

What VPN service to use?

DON'T use VPN services

https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29

By far the easiest way to cause poor performance, instability, overheating and crashing is to install ANY third-party speeder-uppers, Cleaners, Optimizers, Third-party Virus scanners, Bit Torrent, or a VPN that you installed yourself. They are relentless in scanning your files, non-stop, looking for virus-like patterns in Everything, or looking for files that have changed. When completed, they do it all again.

The idea that a third party, with no special knowledge of the inner workings of MacOS, can somehow find a simple way to protect or speed up your computer — that is not already being done by MacOS itself — suggests that the MacOS developers are somehow "holding out on you". That is absurd.

You should remove any and all (other than Apple built-in) virus scanners, speeder uppers, optimizers, cleaners, App deleters or VPN packages you installed yourself, or anything of that ilk.

Your exceptionally well-crafted Macintosh computer does not accumulate filth that needs any third-party anything to clean it. Everything needed to run it efficiently was included in the box, except ONE: a drive on which to store a second copy of your files in case the first copy is damaged or deleted by accident. The backup software, Time Machine, is already present -- integrated deeply into MacOS.

Third-party file Sync-ers such as DropBox, BackBlaze, OneDrive, Carbonite, or GoogleDrive can ruin performance, but are not inherently dangerous.

They were Quickly ported from that other Operating System, and were never re-written to take advantage of the MacOS ‘File System Event Store’. The typical brute-force search they use takes all afternoon for one pass. That relentless searching is a completely un-necessary waste of resources.

Native Synch and Backup programs like iCloud Drive and Time Machine that DO use the MacOS File System Event Store can find changes really quickly and be done with their work and suspend themselves. Time machine can run backups Hourly, while all those others are still beating on the file system for the first pass, four hours later. By the time those others have finished one pass, they need to start again.

even better, if you have iCloud plus, apple gives you iCloud private Relay, apple private relay hides your IP address and browsing activity in safari and protects your unencrypted Internet traffic so that no one can see about who you are and what size you're visiting.

Jesus_Saves1 wrote:

even better, if you have iCloud plus, apple gives you iCloud private Relay, apple private relay hides your IP address and browsing activity in safari and protects your unencrypted Internet traffic so that no one can see about who you are and what size you're visiting.

iCloud+ Private Relay is a good (arguably better) alternative to a VPN, yes.

iCloud Private Relay does mask the endpoints of the connection from each end akin to a two-hop Tor or I2P, and the provided ODoH does protect and mask DNS traffic, but Private Relay does not alter the TLS end-to-end connection that underlies HTTPS, nor does it add encryption for HTTP traffic.

Add-on VPNs do add a second additional and partial tunnel (read: overhead) around the existing and secure end-to-end encryption, but don’t mask the connection endpoints from the VPN provider, nor do they mask metadata from the provider, nor the DNS; these VPNs are perfect for collecting personally-identified metadata, however.

Or as this “coffee shop” VPN design has sometimes been characterized, pinky-promise security, lowered performance, and for negligible added benefits.

iCloud+ Private Relay: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602