Every so often, a call comes through to our tech support department about a pop-up window saying that the computer is infected with a virus or some other malware. A larger and larger chunk of the Mac community is recent Switchers, those who’ve made the switch from Windows to Mac. If you have a computer running any variant of Windows and you see that message, there is cause for alarm in most cases, especially if you click through the link. But, if you have a Mac, there is absolutely nothing to worry about! There are no known viruses or malware for Macs running any variant of OS X. There were a handful of viruses for the classic MacOS, but because that operating system hasn’t been updated in about ten years there is little cause for alarm there.
Search engines do a reasonably good job at filtering out “scareware” web sites, but if you’re a frequent user of the Internet you should expect to see one of these messages at some time or another.
It should be noted that Macs running Windows through Boot Camp or emulation software like Parallels and VMWare will need virus protection on the Windows side. If your boot camp partition or virtual machine becomes infected with a virus, your Mac will not be affected. Small Dog offers Symantec AntiVirus for Windows, which is widely recognized as the best AntiVirus protection available for Windows. It’s a necessary add-on for any Windows or Parallels purchase.