W97M/Generic spyware that will actually delete it, or any one knows how to manual remove it, please help? Macbook pro, late 2011

It's a Word exploit, from 1997, so unless you have a very old copy of Word for Windows on your Mac (unlikely) it will do nothing.

Get rid of AVG, it is junk, it will keep warning you about harmless things.

I do not recommend any at all, I will recommend that you go to this site and read. The Safe Mac

It shouldn't affect your Time Machine backup if that is what you are asking.

If you have the name of the 2 files, try using EasyFind to find them.

EasyFind – Spotlight Replacement

It seems to me that Mr. Botezatu isn't much of an expert. He cites one "virus", the Flashback malware. It does depend on how technical you want to get with that example.

1) Flashback did indeed behave exactly like a virus in that it infected a computer without any assistance from the user. But, it only worked if you had Java installed, and it was enabled in your web browser. If you didn't have Java installed or enabled, then a loaded site would pop up a message to try and get you to manually agree to install something. Which is Trojan activity. You have to allow it.

2) Flashback was never an OS X virus. It was a Java exploit. So from that technical aspect, OS X itself has still never been infected with a virus.

The KitM.A backdoor he mentions was spread as a link or attachment in an email. So again, not a virus. It's a Trojan you had to download and install.

Rootpipe isn't malware at all, of any kind. It's a long standing flaw in OS X's underlying Unix code that was just fairly recently discovered.

So once again, an "expert" is throwing the words virus and OS X around as if it means something, when they are, once again, wrong.

There's no way for us to tell what you downloaded and installed. All AV software is essentially useless. The only one I'd even consider recommending is the free ClamXav. It may, or may not find whatever was installed. Do you remember what site you were on that asked you to download the file?

Just to note, never, ever download anything a third party web site tells you to install. If a site says you need a Java update, get it only from Oracle. If a site claims you need to update Flash, get it only from Adobe. If a site claims you need a "codec" to view a video or anything else, it's just a flat out lie.

fgmanta wrote:

Thank you! Csound1

I keep reading there is and have been vulnerabilities in OS X for sometime now, the last was today here is the articule, your advise will be greatly appreciated. See art http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/can-macs-get-viruses/

What would you expect an employee of an A-V software vendor to say, "Don't use our product?"

OS X will protect you from all currently known malware as long as you keep it fully up-to-date (so I hope you aren't still running OS X 10.9.2 as it says in your profile) and don't disable the capability.

Adware is a slightly different problem, but you can avoid that by simply reading what you are being told when you install any software and if there is something you don't want, opt-out (uncheck the box).

Given your description, it's unlikely you have anything to worry about. The attachment was what Csound1 explained; an old Word macro virus that only affects Word. And then only if you have the option on to allow macros to load without checking. The default is to let you know a Word doc contains a macro:

You then have the option to disallow the macro to load/run, or just not open the document.

It's easy at times to get caught with an email you weren't expecting. Spoofing is very easy to do. Which means the sender name isn't necessarily where the email actually came from. In this case, it probably did, but was caused by a Windows email virus on their end. Typically, these types of viruses send out the same email to everyone on that computer's contact list. On the Mac, that can't happen. The email hits your inbox and stops since the virus can't run on your OS. So no one in your email contact list gets anything forwarded to them.