Does Norton for Mac catch spyware? I dwnld a file, and the text says the installer may be spyware. The forums I searched said this is for ads, is that still the case? (The forums were from 2002 and sounded like they were talking pc, not mac). How do I see theses programs and get rid of them? Any help on this issue would be appreciated, thanks.

GDS1

Hi...

I cannot answer re: specifically Norton apps for Mac, but...
Norton Internet Security on Windoze certainly catches most 'dataminers' which are what you are actually talking about...
Real 'spyware' is quite rare.
There are also numerous applications available for Windoze that are written solely for finding and either quarantining or deleting 'dataminer' files... I assume that there must also be others written for the Mac users.

When/If you do run an Adware/'Spyware' detection app., be cautious about how you read the results. Many of these apps are very poorly written and have as their 'definitions' rather primitive groupings that will often include every file related to a filesharing application !

If you do find some suitable application before anyone else also replies to you here, please come back and give the other Mac users a report, OK ?

p.s. Again, beware of the majority of posts and comments re: so-called 'Spyware'... The vast majority of things written about it are nonsensical misunderstandings powered by a lot of misplaced emotional 'heat' !

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Sunni in places, Shi'ite in others...

There's so little for Macs in this area

http://www.unwantedlinks.com/macsupport.htm has some links and some FUD factor, but even the recommended http://macscan.securemac.com/ looks out of date and unavailable for download currently. I browsed their forums and found so little.

I've read about Little Snitch being used to notify you about "phone home" situations

So, looks like this is not a problem for Macs yet, and if it is, it's at such a low or sophisticated level that Mac security experts may be competing with Maytag repairmen for jobs.

Hey, stief ! You know something secret ?
I always thought the Mac tech people all first came from Maytag !
No ???

btw, aren't 'dataminers' a whole lot different from viruses ???
You mean that there are no charming folks out there trying to make buck$ off of Mac users by 'reading' their 'trends' ?

I'd GUESS there should be with all the publicity about the iPod and iTunes, but really see so little discussion of it on my reading lists. I recall a discussion a while back that LW almost risked being the first to try. I don't know if it's because OSXers mostly use Apple's default Safari and Mail (avoiding the PC dataminers that I read about that rely on Microsoft exploits) or whatever.

Honestly, Ursula, trying to find reliable known stuff about Mac exploits is tough. Most of the FUD I've followed leads back to someone thinking a PC warning included Macs. Mac users are quite innocent here, which I hope can be preserved. With the switch to OSX, Apple moved into the *NIX camp, and those folks know exploits, and are pretty trusty.

Salut à tous, malware is not a problem for me, but it can affect mac users.
I did a search for a definition of malware and google came with this:
Malware (for "malicious software"): is programming or files that are developed for the purpose of doing harm. Thus, malware includes computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.

Viruses: Mac is not affected by viruses, but some macro virus for microsoft office can affect mac users (I got infected with the melissa virus by exchanging .doc documents between the university and my home computer).
Worms: The Apache server that come with os x is prone to worms that affects, of course Apache (I know there are worms for older versions of Apache targetting Linux users, -but it could be mac users as well depending what the worms is targetting on the computer-).
As for Trojan Horses: Macs aren't immune to them: there are none for now, and writing one for mac is hard as most internet services on os x are disabled by default... but it is possible.

Of course comparing malware for os x and windows is comparing apples to oranges at the level of magnitude of attacks...

For now I fear more antivirus software and badly or old written softwares (not on purpose however -as it is by malware-) on my mac than spywares, malware and the crew.

Bonne fin de semaine

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I would like change wording here: Apache is the most popular internet server around and thus a very interesting target to find exploits for. It is not more prone to worms as any other software.

But from the bugs Apache had (which were fixed very timely by the Apache developers, by the way) I have seen only Linux Intel exploits. It is also possible to use buffer overflows and similar ilk on Mac, but due to the different CPU architecture are not portable easily. I did find a documunt named PPC_OSX_Shellcode_Assembly.pdf which appears to be a tutorial on how to do this on Mac. So may be the worms will also spread to Mac in the future.

Thanks for the discussion of sypware, you guys are truly contributing to my education! I guess I've been tooling along all these years with no idea, at least in the mac world, that all this stuff existed. Kinda reinforces my belief in my Mac as the more elegant solution to computing (not to start anything, just personal belief!) for the non-tech inclined person. I'll definitely followup on some of those links to "read more about it". BTW, what's FUD?

GDS1

according to http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/f/FUD.html
Sure describes Mac users like me waiting to experience the horrors of malware! LOL