TubeNet

What bloke said. Just do it. You can't afford not to.

Thanks, Joe. CCleaner is pretty incredible. I had AdAware and SpyBot, but missed this one.

Chuck

From a fellow Mac user: you know better! But of course you do, or you wouldn't have posted the "twisted" smiley!

Bloke and his computers are in a similar situation to my and my tubas.

bloke wrote:bloke "and remember, I'm not picky. I just use computers that are given to me - or that I picked up off the curb...and you paid HOW much...??"

Actually, I didn't pay anything. The glories of having an older brother with money and the willingness to hand down his old laptop to his younger, starving musician brother.

There technically are virus protection software for mac, but they aren't that big yet. There's always been a threat of viruses for macs, it's just the market share has been so small that no one really cared. I got Virex from my school and ran it...at completely irregular intervals. It never cleaned anything anyways.

Tubenet has never loaded slow with my firefox either

I agree that "flying below the radar" of the more malicious intruders is a good phrase. A couple of years ago I had a solitaire shareware game seize up my Mac. Here's what happened: I was trying to update my Mac and run some things off. When I got to this particular solitaire game, something in it sensed instead I was trying to duplicate it without permission instead, so it started attacking my icons. I called in and gave them information, and, indeed, it was a low level virus that was new to Apple, as it was imbedded in the program instead of email. They helped me sort it out. Fortunately, I did not lose anything, as I saw what was coming, being the icons were the first things to go screwy, and backed up my hard drive immediately.

But I agree also that ever since I have looked for good protection programs as those listed above for PC's, and for the same reason that Macs fly below the radar for most malware, they also fly below the radar for most other stuff as well.

That said, OSX is really good when online to identify and block malware that would download. A download screen pops up for everything that is not just a routine cookie, and you can stop most of it right there. Even if it does get down faster than you can click to stop it, you click on the magnifying glass icon on the download screen, and it pops up as to where it was put, usually on the desktop, and you can delete it and overwrite it immediately before it has a chance to do anything.

I thought I knew what popups were when I would browse around and some site would open up an ad in a new window.

I discovered what Windows users were complaining about when I went to a friend's house and saw these windows pop up out of nowhere even without any programs running.

That's STUPID. I don't care how cheap you are. I can't imagine living with crap like that. I have better things to do with my life than to constantly fix my computer.

/end my contribution to the latest in a million "Mac vs Windows virus-proofness" discussions

Man, you're bitter.

And vindictive.

I keep forgetting that you're such a grouch.

Bloke is right. Just like eating too much overrefined crap can not only add weight, but kill you in the long run, too much crap in this regard can also.

I'm not as self-efficient as bloke is, but I don't have a big screen either, unless you count the Magnavox 25" that I bought ten years ago large. I do have a nice stereo to adequately play the CD's that 1) I want to listen to, and 2) that our church music director wants me to listen to so I can accurately transcribe parts occasionally. No surround sound. I do have a DVD, which I play my CD's on, but it was a Christmas gift from my inlaws, and mostly because I don't have a separate CD player.

I do have some very nice instruments, which have paid for themselves, and a comfortable home for my wife and son.

I have spent more than that on my automobiles, but only after checking to see that they scored the highest possible crash test ratings, which showed their value when we got rear ended a couple of years ago.

Yes, I do have a sports car, from when I was single, and I paid less for it than most new "inexpensive" cars cost new now, and I keep it.

It has nothing to do with bitterness, anger, or any other negative emotion. Actually, far from it. It's called being content with what you have and living within your personal budget, whatever that may be. We could all do with a little more austerity and a little bit less conspicuous consumption.

Since we're going to boast about how Zen-cheap we are...

I've never bought a TV. Got one as a birthday gift 18 years ago, but it crapped out within a month, so I returned it to the store and got some speakers for my (used) car and a few CDs, one of which I had my dad recommend for me. Since then, I've watched my roommates' TVs, and the one I have now is a friend's extra that he had sitting in storage in his basement.

Got one tuba that was part of a batch of 5 bought by a local repairman, who cannibalized the worst to fix the other four; mine's 3rd best of those four.

Rode the same bicycle for... geez, let's see... probably sixteen years. Its bottom bracket went to hell and I got it fixed. The rear brake cable finally rusted apart, too, but the day it broke, somebody stole it from campus. Used leftover student loan money to buy a new bike.

Got my Mac used from a friend. Haven't wasted a second of my life doing anti-spyware-malware-virus-anything on it. Haven't reinstalled the OS, haven't cleaned a Registry (whatever that is). I can't understand why anyone would want, or need, to.

Leland wrote:I can't understand why anyone would want, or need, to.

Lemme just go whip a quick Mac virus and send it your way. Apple's claim is that their security is higher and you don't have to worry about viruses. That's only partly true. Macs may have better security, but Mac viruses do exist, they just aren't as plentiful as PC viruses (due to PCs having a much larger market share than Macs). If you got a virus, you might wish you were running anti-virus software.

It's also not like bloke is sitting there with screwdriver and hammer fixing his computer every 20 minutes (though ya never know ). I can't say this for all anti-virus software and the such, but Virex (which I use) is currently set to open on launch of computer and run. I don't have to do anything unless there is an update, for which I spend a couple seconds typing in my password. While it's checking my computer, I go do other stuff. No biggie.

Colby "glad the 1291 tornado title wasn't given to above Chicago resident" Fahrenbacher

DaTubaKid wrote:

Leland wrote:I can't understand why anyone would want, or need, to.

Lemme just go whip a quick Mac virus and send it your way.

You want my IP address while you're at it?

So there's a few things that just confused me:

I just installed HiJackThis, Spybot, and CCleaner. I already had Ad-Aware, Norton AV, and a few good firewalls. HiJackThis is too confusing. I'm afraid I'm going to delete something I need. How do I learn what's good and what isn't?

Also, I've never had a random window popup when there was no browser opened, and it just happened to me AFTER running all these programs. What just happened?

Nick

bloke wrote: HiJackThis finds stuff than none of the other programs find. Tell it to NOT ONLY show the list but to also show the LOG. Basically, the LOG is the same as the list, but in a form that you can copy-and-paste. Once you've copied the LOG, go to http://www.hijackthis.de and PASTE the log into the provided field. You will then be told which items are GOOD, NEUTRAL, stuff that you KNOWINGLY CHOSE to put on your computer, or HARMFUL. Once everything has been identified (c. 10 seconds), you can compare it back to your list, and then make your OWN now-educated decisions whether to keep or delete. You will likely keep NEARLY ALL of the stuff and only DELETE two or three things.

Thanks.

bloke wrote:pop-ups... Are those junk ads, or warnings from Spybot? There is a setting on "Spybot" that warns you about EVERY SINGLE piece of malware that tried to grab on to your computer. You can DE-select that option and block all of the crap silently / automatically.

It was an IE window (I rarely use IE), wanting me to vote on the best camera or some crap.

bloke wrote:btw: I really don't think you need more than one good firewall...Redundant firewalls (when I've seen them installed on other computers) seem to only make pages load more slowly without added protection.

I have the Windows firewall, and my apartment complex has a firewall as well in the hub.

Nick

Good Lord. I just wandered for the very first time into this part of Tubenet, and ran into Bloke's post that made me wonder if I should just do myself in right now. Why? Because I seem to have much more in common with Bloke, in terms of lifestyle choices, than, urk, I would have guessed. I'm not quite as cheap as he is, but there are several things that match up.

Oh, Yikes. Is my life over now?

MA