Security on the Mac

ByMike Moffit

by Matt@Smalldog.com (posted By Ed, written by Matt@Smalldog.com)

A very vigilant customer bought a new Mac Mini over the weekend at our Burlington store to replace his Dell running Windows XP Pro. After identity theft, virus infestations, spyware slowdowns, and incessant blue screens of death, he was excited about moving over to the Mac. However, his experience with his Dell was so scarring that he simply could not trust that the Mac was an almost impenetrable platform straight out of the box.

He got the computer home, turned it on, and connected to his existing wireless network using the setup assistant. First stop on the new Mac was the firewall settings of the Sharing Preference Pane. He discovered that the firewall was disabled, and, in a panic, enabled it and went straight to the computer’s logs to make sure no one had invaded his brand new computer. First thing Monday morning, I received a call from the customer, who was convinced his Mac was compromised. I could not convince him otherwise, and agreed to replace the machine outright as a good faith measure.

We sat down together in the store and set up the replacement computer offline, enabling the firewall, installing AntiVirus software, and doing software updates off of CDs before letting the machine connect to the internet.

We’re always happy to help customers as much as possible, but I’d like to put it out there: you do not need antivirus software, you don’t need expensive hardware and/or software firewalls, and there is no such thing as adware or spyware for the mac. Period. Set a complex password for all accounts that includes letters, numbers, symbols, capitals, and lower-case characters. Make it 20 characters long if you like. And then breathe normally, and savor the peace of mind that comes with owning a Mac.

Password strength analyzer: the key icon next to the field where you’d enter password, like the accounts Preference Pane.

FileVault:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/filevault

Encrypted disk images:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107333

Secure trash emptying:

“http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh475.html”

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