Preparing a used macbook pro for personal use
Hi, all.
I'm reaching out to the Apple Support Community to determine: 1) if my chosen course of action is a sufficient one to address my concerns; and 2) if there is anything else I could do to further address my concerns.
I recently purchased a used mid-2015 Macbook Pro 15" (2.2 Ghz processor; 256 GB SSD) off of craigslist. Prior to purchase, it looks like the Macbook Pro was reset to factory settings by the previous owner.
My two primary concerns center on residual (i.e., unintentionally installed) malicious code from the previous user and intentional malicious code that may have been put there by the previous owner. And to just make sure we're on the same page, by using the phrase "malicious code," I'm collectively referring to malware, viruses, etc.
I believe the previous factory reset on the Macbook should have taken care of these two primary concerns, but I'd feel more comfortable doing things myself. As a result, I plan on performing an internet recovery on the Macbook to erase the SSD and the current recovery partition on that SSD, in addition to performing a clean install of the Mac OS that was originally installed on the Macbook. I decided to perform an internet recovery instead of a local recovery (using a bootable USB drive) because, from what I understand, the local recovery won't actually erase the current recovery partition on the 256 SSD.
Do you folks think these two steps are sufficient to rid the Macbook of any potential malicious code that was unintentionally/intentionally installed? Additionally, is there anything else I can do prior to transferring over my data onto the new-to-me Macbook?
Thanks in advance, everyone.
MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12)
