How do I get rid of viruses on my mac?

Hi anyone reading,

I downloaded Bit Defender Virus Scanner, did the scan, and found a number of things on my computer, but I don't know how to get rid of them . . . These are all still on my laptop and its saying they can't be quarantined . . . Any Ideas of how to get rid of them?

Here is my vote. Back-up any settings onto iCloud (as you should be doing), note applications that you want to reinstall. Back-up any music, photos and documents onto an external drive or cloud. Then reset your mac to zero by formatting and installing a fresh version of the os. That will wipe out anything wonky that you have on your computer. Plus this will be like a spring cleaning on your computer. Yes it is time consuming but the peace of mind will be worth it. Be super serious about what documents you back-up. Do not back up the viruses and reinstall them on your computer. If you have one virus on your computer that you know of you don't know there are probably others and as well you don't know about including key loggers and such.

You will probably see speed improvements and such as well.

One thing you can do to help keep out of strange sites is to use a service like opendns.com that will help keep you and any computer in the house navigating to weird sites that will give you a virus. I also recommend changing behaviors to not put yourself in a situation to get a virus when working with the net. Don't download strange files, don't install applications that you don't know what they do, and never click on links from emails that you do not know the source. If you get strange emails from a bank or organization that is requiring you to verify information. Delete the email. Navigate to that organization's website (don't click on anything in the email) separately (that you know you are doing business with) and log in and verify everything is correct. If you find that your email is full of spam I might recommend getting a new email address and resetting all the places that email you to that new address.

Also, get an application like 1password and store unique and different passwords for each site in this application. It will generate and store the passwords. Only you will know them and you will be even more secure.

WZZZ....I followed your instructions from "Getting rid of Virus's" on the Mac Forum. I went into Network Utilities and did the Ping to www.google.com. Here is the results. What does this tell you if anything? I am getting several pop ups on Safari and can't get rid of them:

Ping has started…

PING www.google.com (74.125.196.105): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=27.899 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=27.598 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=27.502 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=26.658 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=4 ttl=44 time=27.744 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=5 ttl=44 time=27.112 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=6 ttl=44 time=26.833 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=7 ttl=44 time=27.257 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=8 ttl=44 time=28.836 ms

64 bytes from 74.125.196.105: icmp_seq=9 ttl=44 time=28.281 ms

--- www.google.com ping statistics ---

10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 26.658/27.572/28.836/0.627 ms

Have you tried Adware medic?

Roquemore04 wrote:

WZZZ....I followed your instructions from "Getting rid of Virus's" on the Mac Forum.

This is a rather old topic, and a lot has changed since it started. Whatever you're seeing is not the result of a virus, though.

As a guess, I'd say you might be seeing ads being injected into sites where they don't belong, redirects to questionable websites or redirects to a different search engine than the one that you have selected. If this is the case, you have adware, not malware. See my Adware Removal Guide for help getting rid of it.

If that's not what you're seeing, you should start your own topic rather than replying to this one. In your new discussion, be sure to clearly describe the problem you're having.

(Fair disclosure: I may receive compensation from links to my sites, TheSafeMac.com and AdwareMedic.com, in the form of buttons allowing for donations. Donations are not required to use my site or software.)

A window appear with a warning with safari saying that my computer is going to be disabled because they found a virus

It's a scam.