review of free sophos mac antivirus software

I've been running Sophos on my systems for years. It doesn't slow things down and doesn't get in the way.

It updates automatically and runs in the background without the end user really noticing.

I used to work in a place where Sophos was used on windows

it slowed everything down to a crawl maybe

because software development use a lot of small files

also many people got virus's on the windows machines even with Sophos on

Mac OS X versions 10.6.7 and later have built-in detection of known Mac malware in downloaded files. The recognition database is automatically updated once a day; however, you shouldn't rely on it, because the attackers are always at least a day ahead of the defenders. In most cases, there’s no benefit from any other automated protection against malware.

The most effective defense against malware is your own intelligence. All known malware that affects a fully-updated installation of Mac OS X 10.6 or later takes the form of trojans, which can only work if the victim is duped into running them. If you're smarter than the malware attacker thinks you are, you won't be duped. That means, primarily, that you never install software from an untrustworthy source. How do you know a source is untrustworthy?

• Any website that prompts you to install a “codec,” “plug-in,” or “certificate” that comes from that same site, or an unknown site, merely in order to use the site, is untrustworthy.
• A web operator who tells you that you have a “virus,” or that anything else is wrong with your computer, or that you have won a prize in a contest you never entered, is trying to commit a crime with you as the victim.
• “Cracked” versions of commercial software downloaded from a bittorrent are likely to be infected.
• Software with a corporate brand, such as Adobe Flash Player, must be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. No intermediary is acceptable.

Disable Java (not JavaScript) in your web browser(s). Few websites have Java content nowadays, so you won’t be missing much. This setting is mandatory in Mac OS X 10.5.8 or earlier, because Java in those versions has bugs that make it unsafe to use on the Internet. Those bugs will probably never be fixed, because those older operating systems are no longer being maintained by Apple. Migrate to a newer version of the Mac OS as soon as you can.

Follow these guidelines, and you’ll be as safe from malware as you can reasonably be.

Never install any commercial "anti-virus" products for the Mac, as they all do more harm than good. If you need to be able to detect Windows malware in your files, use ClamXav — nothing else.

I ran the free version of Sophos Anti-Virus on my 10.7.4 and 10.6.8 Macs for a while. I found that they caused significant performance problems, and found one repeatable action that would freeze the computer (spinning beach ball of death until you do a hard power down) if Sophos was running. Turning Sophos off solved the problem, but still slowed performance. When I de-installed Sophos, the problems went away.

For the person who says it doesn't slow the computer down, I'd recommend de-installing it as an experiment. You can always reinstall if you don't see a significant performance improvement.

William

Could you post your macs specs to give better diffintion to sophos compatibility?

Ben

10.7.4 runs on a MacBook Air 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 with 4GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 memory and APPLE SSD SM256C solid state disk

10.6.8 runs on an iMac 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3 with 4GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 memory and WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0 rotational disk

When were you running it that you had problems? I'm asking because there have probably been improvements.

Ran it for a few months, and I deinstalled it on Jun 25, 2012. I was running the free version of Sophos for Mac.

Thanks for the feedback. If you want anything, ClamXav is known to run unintrusively.

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

BlaineBaker wrote:

Any comments about free Sophos Mac Antivirus software?

I've had it installed on my wife's iMac G5 running OS X 10.5.8 for a couple of years, mostly for testing purposes. I keep "On-access Scanning" turned off as it does extract a large amount of CPU use with my setup. At one point it did suddenly go crazy, filling up the console log with entries, rebooting didn't help so I had to uninstall it for a few weeks. It never found anything that I didn't already know about.

FYI: came here to read reviews on sophos - which i installed yesterday. i had noticed a slow down, but assumed it was my spotty internet connection. after reading this post, i deleted the program. lo and behold - everything's sped back up.

i really liked the thoroughness of the program though. so i think i'll just download it as needed, and delete it afterwards.

ETA: i run on 10.7.2

traefromon wrote:

i really liked the thoroughness of the program though. so i think i'll just download it as needed, and delete it afterwards.

I would recommend leaving it installed and allow it to automatically update but stop the "On access Scanning". I think you will find that the slow downs will stop and it's always there and up-to-date when you think you need to check something.