how to get rid of virus

No Norton. It's a Mac killer. Stay away from it. Those "viruses," a catch all word for any kind of malware, are most likely only Windows and won't affect a Mac. But you don't want to pass them on to your PC friends. There are NO viruses for Mac.*

Run ClamXav. It has a good reputation and won't destroy your Mac. See what it may turn up. Also, ask Optimum how they are able to scan your drive for these "viruses." That's a neat trick.

http://www.clamxav.com/download.php

There are no viruses affecting Macs. The cable people have their heads up their arses.

As you now know, that message itself from Optimum was phishing/malware. If you ever get a pop-up or email claiming you have a virus or malware, _under no circumstances_ , should you follow through with anything on it, even trying to close it. Just quit the browser instead. If it's set a cookie, remove that. If it's an email, just trash it. Set your browser to not allow pop-ups.

Never open email attachments from untrusted sources. Stay away from P2P (file sharing) sites and Torrents and don't download any pirated software. Be careful on Facebook if you go there. It's not a place to especially avoid malware.

For ClamX, set the "source list" all the way on the left to Macintosh HD, or whatever you may have named that Folder. It will then scan the whole drive, but it may take quite a while. If you use ClamX, you only need to do this once in a blue moon, if at all. exe. (not .exc) files can not run on a Mac, Windows only.

ClamX, if it identifies anything, will probably only find Windows malware. There are a few, but only very few, Trojans for Mac.

Read this primer on Mac malware.

http://www.reedcorner.net/guides/macvirus/

Frank:

That window was a browser pop-up, just like any other pop-up advertisement you might see. They're designed to fool people into thinking they have a virus, clicking on the "Scan" button, and downloading malware to their PCs. But it is purely an advert (and a nasty scam, at that). Even on a PC, a company pushing ads cannot "scan" your computer for viruses. As you've found, the download on a Mac does nothing. You can tell it's a scam for PCs because it usually mentions the "C" drive and Windows folders such as "My Documents".

I advise you to turn off popups in your browser (for Safari - go to the Safari menu and click Block Popup Windows - unfortunately, it won't eliminate the problem entirely) and perhaps also use ad-blocking software. If you see such a window again, click the "close" button to the top left (use the normal red Mac window close button, since anything that says "Close" or "Cancel" in the window itself will likely not work).

Matt

he advised me that what I saw was probably malware, and not to be too concerned.

"He" is an idiot. He says malware like it's some sort of specific threat. Malware is short for malicious software, which is a catch-all for any threat; virus, worm, Trojan, etc.

This one actually showed a window with a list of viruses including 2 Trojan Horses.

Did that screen look anything like the one show here?

http://www.im-infected.com/rogue/user-protection.html

If so, the so called AV software itself is the malware. It's been around for years. Every year they come out with a new one with the current year in the name to try and make it sound legitimate. The list of viruses it "finds" are usually a mix of .dll files, some real, some made up. All Windows stuff since .dll files don't exist in OS X.

On a Windows system, it is very pervasive. Blocking access to the Internet and even deleting your real AV software from the hard drive to keep you from removing it. All the while trying to extort $29.99 from you to activate the "full version" to remove the "viruses" from your computer. If you fall for it, all it does is return control of your computer to you while actually doing nothing (though it claims to have now cleaned your computer). Better than that, the crooks now also have your credit card number.

Anyway, I mention this Windows threat because it's been reported that the same jerks are trying to figure out a way to get it to work against Mac users. Since it can't install without your help as it does in Windows, infected web sites instead pop it up in a window. There is no software anywhere which can scan your hard drive remotely for viruses through a web browser, so it is of course completely bogus.

Wherever you click on the window it would download an exc. file.

I imagine you meant .exe file. Yes, that's one way the infection on a Windows computer starts. Once you download the .exe file, it automatically runs and then downloads the rest of the components it needs from the Internet to take control of your computer. Since an .exe file cannot run in OS X, you just end up with a few files taking up a bit of space on your hard drive.

He told me that Apple had a free virus software that I could use, but I couldn't find it.

Apple provides no AV software. Just links on some of their pages to third party vendors that do.

Frank --
You've gotten outstanding advice here.
It was a scam.

In addition to "Blocking Pop-ups" in the Safari menu,
you can add GlimmerBlocker. It's free, and in combination with the
Safari pop-up blocker, hardly anything gets through -- pop-up, pop-unders, etc.

Frank, you had written the following which at first led me to believe the notification was from Optimum.

I just switched from Verizon to optimum and suddenly I have a notification that there are 12 viruses on my >computer.
I've had macs since 1984 and never had a virus.
The cable people tell me that I have to get rid of them, but didn't tell me how.

Was the pop-up, in fact, designed to masquerade as one from Optimum, perhaps with an Optimum logo? If so, I would find it troubling that you received this just upon switching to them.

Hi, Kurt how have you been?

Still breathing. 🙂

BTW, do you know if they ever corrected the font conflicts with OS 10.6, QuarkXPress and CS4?
These were primarily with Helvetica Neue and ITC Garamond.

By "they", I'm guessing you mean Apple. No, it's still the same, and unlikely to change as Apple has now incorporated their conflicting versions of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue extensively into the design of their supplied apps. And as of 10.6.5 and later, you can add Helvetica Light to the list. The only solution is to move the conflicting Apple fonts somewhere else where you can control them with your font manager. Turn them off when you require a different version of these fonts active; turn them back on when you don't.

Everything you describe next is a complete scam and nothing more than an attempt to get you to download the payload. Which you did, but it couldn't do anything on your Mac.

The font work around is too complicated and time consuming so I'll stick with OS 10.5.

It's the same workaround in 10.5. You still have to get Apple's Helvetica fonts out of the way in order to use Type 1 versions from Adobe or Linotype.

I now see how slick these people are with their scams, wonder how many users get caught up and pay.

It's not a scam. Just a very poor decision on Apple's part to give the Helvetica fonts they created the exact same internal names as the long standing Type 1 fonts. They should have named them Apple Helvetica, or something similar. Then this problem wouldn't exist.