Is virus protection needed for iMacs?

No. There is no such thing as a Mac virus.

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No. AV software is totaly unnecessary on the Mac.

All it will do for you if you install it is cause problems.

So don't do it.

Unless you really love problems.

Allan

Here's a little more info. MacKeeper, Sophos, and Norton for Mac all have bad reputations and some are considered dangerous.

There is a malware out there going by names such as MacDefender, MacSecurity and MacProtector. It acts like it's AV software but it is actually malware.

Once again, no AV software needed, as there are no viruses. If you want to download one anyway, get ClamXav, but it would pretty much just be taking up space on your computer.

For more info, see Reed's virus guide and Klaus1's virus guide

And this, too 🙂:

Viruses and Malware on the Mac

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(Note that my links to other pages may promote my organization, and this should not be taken as an endorsement by Apple)

Your link has good info on the Mac Defender malware. Thanks for sharing! However, I respectfully disagree with the idea that ClamXav is the only software that does not harm Macs and has a good reputation.

People who tend to prefer ClamXav seem to do so because it doesn't install a bunch of stuff that does things in the background. Another way of saying this is that ClamXav does not offer real-time scanning, although it can be useful to manually scan specific files when you want to; some say that's all you need. The benefit is that it's free, but it is not the only software with a good reputation and that does not harm your computer.

On the other hand, I guess it depends on how you define "harm" to your Mac.

Is harm defined strictly as Mac malware? Or is it more about how the software runs on your Mac? In the case of MacDefender, this Trojan horse certainly causes harm to Mac users, especially if you were tricked into buying it or giving your credit card information to its makers. MacDefender is malicious software.

It also depends on what your definition of a "good reputation" is for Mac virus protection software.

Is good reputation based only on what is said about the software from users on the Apple support forums? Or is good reputation something that comes with time-in-service (or perhaps number of people using the software), and the software makers ability to proactively discover new Mac malware and update threat filters? If the latter is more closely related to your definition of a good reputation, then Intego software should be on the list too.

Intego has a good reputation for Mac virus protection, and after months of personally using it on my machine I know it does not cause any harm. Contrarily, I also know that Clam AV software is widely suggested on these forums as a good choice for virus protection. I've tried both. But this is just my opinion - you are certainly entitled to your own.

There are some highly experienced people here running Sophos free who say it's just fine. A lot of this talk here is urban mythology. Not from personal experience, since I have never used it, but Norton, it is almost universally agreed, causes severe problems.

It seems to be taken as sanctified fact that all AV is bad, or that no AV is necessary on a Mac. Seems to be a core Mac "religious" belief among many. Maybe some AV can be helpful in certain situations. I'm sure some AV is bad, some isn't. And maybe a lot of the purported problems with AV are due to particular user configurations, just like problematic software updates. My urban mythology detector is on high in this whole area. I don't trust anything that gets around this way "sanctified." Often seems like a lot of conformist pressure and plain dogmatism to me.

So how would you define software that can harm your Mac? Does it have to be malicious, or is software that's incompatible with most Macs basically the same thing? I've never tried Sophos, so I can't say much about it..

MacKeeper, one function of which is AV, is, for example, harmful, if not downright malicious. Some AV may cause kernel panics; that's an example of harmful as incompatible. Most of the problems seem to have nothing to do with malice. Sophos runs fine for some, for others it appears it may cause KPs. But I've never seen anything that proves that with any certainty.

I just have a lot of trouble with the religious zeal with which some approach this topic.

And if I can add to WZZZ's observations the proof of the evil in MacKeeper is the experience I had where I found myself looking at an invitation to download cleanmyMac (something else to avoid) and being told within the same screen that MacKeeper says thank you for downloading its facility. I hadn't and knew I hadn't, but I can see how people could have be taken in. The 'thank you' read so authoratatively.

I am new regarding Apple products, in January I purchased an iMac and since I grew up using Windows and being used to be forced to install AV, I did the same for my new iMac.

I first installed Avast, and I honestly didn't recommend it, it causes problems with the OS and it stops it from closing your session.

So now I am using Sophos, no problems so far, but to be honest, if after using Windows for 10 years I never had problems with a virus, and specially realizing now that Mac have no problems at all regarding virus, I am going to uninstall it.

Better to avoid installing unnecessary soft, IMHO.

Tycoon24 wrote:

People who tend to prefer ClamXav seem to do so because it doesn't install a bunch of stuff that does things in the background. Another way of saying this is that ClamXav does not offer real-time scanning, although it can be useful to manually scan specific files when you want to; some say that's all you need.

Actually, the full version available from the here (as opposed to the AppStore version) does have a real-time-scan capability called Sentry which will watch designated directories for change and scan new/updated files.

In my opinion, "harmful" software doesn't have to be malicious. Take Norton for example. It is legitimate anti-virus software, however it has been known to delete system files from the Mac (that shouldn't have been deleted). So basically, if it deletes things that should be kept or keeps things that should be deleted, that in my opinion is harmful.

I totally agree with you about ClamXav. I'm sure there are others out there that work just fine, but ClamXav is the ONLY one that is respected here, if you care to browse around the communities. However, the bottom line is, even ClamXav is unecessary, as there are no "viruses" on the Mac that you need protection from. So AV software generally just takes up space on the computer.

Some will agree with me and some won't.

WZZZ wrote:

There are some highly experienced people here running Sophos free who say it's just fine. A lot of this talk here is urban mythology.

I'm not sure I qualify as highly experienced but I've run Sophos Home Edition almost since the day it was released on multiple Macs & I have had zero problems with it. I've even tried to duplicate the few reports of specific issues with it as best I can, but unfortunately almost none of the reports are from direct, firsthand experience. When I ask for details, I get evasive or incomplete answers, making it impossible for me to do much in that respect.

One thing I've noticed about many of those denouncing any & all commercial Mac AV software is a tendency to blame it for any problem they see without doing much if anything to try to verify that assumption. Another is that many of these folks don't seem to know much about how these apps can or should be configured, or how that can affect their operation.

But most of all, it seems to be an article of near religious faith for some Mac users that this kind of software is completely & absolutely unnecessary, downright evil, always a scam, etc. & react to any comment about that being overly simplistic as if it was heresy.

Please make no mistake: I'm not trying to tell anybody if they should run AV software on their Mac. I'm just suggesting that not all AV apps should be judged as if they were the same, nor should a few scattered or vague reports of issues with any particular app be considered as meaning it has or deserves a bad reputation. (If that were true, you could say the same of almost any app, to say nothing of every version of OS X or update for it Apple has ever released!)

All that said, Norton & MacKeeper (not to be confused with the MacDefender malware) do not have great reputations (for different reasons) & probably should not be serious contenders for anyone considering an AV app for their Mac. ClamXav is the most often recommended one, & as MadMacs0 mentioned, you might want to consider the newest full 2.0 version (not the app store one) if you want background scanning. It is not quite the same thing as say Sophos offers in that respect, & requires somewhat more effort to set up than Sophos' 'on access' scanner, but that's the point:

One size does not fit all, so be at least a bit leery of the advice of anyone that says otherwise.

stevejobsfan0123 wrote:

However, the bottom line is, even ClamXav is unecessary, as there are no "viruses" on the Mac that you need protection from. So AV software generally just takes up space on the computer.

FWIW, I don't run Sophos Home Edition because I'm worried much about Mac malware (not the same thing as viruses!) -- it exists but it is relatively easy to avoid.

I run it because I am worried about the security of the info about myself & my family that exists on the PC's of my friends & associates, many of whom are not particularly computer savvy. I don't want to pass on to them in emails files infected with PC malware that could compromise that & I want to know when they email me anything with a PC infection so I can alert them to the problem(s) they have in that respect.

This is not jusst a theoretical concern -- I'm almost certain that my email address has been delivered to spammers this way on more than one occasion & much worse, that some other much more sensitive info was compromised on one occasion as well.

Just something to think about.