famousringo said: Feylic said: famousringo said: stof said: Mac stores advocate that you stay the hell away from Limewire as it will fill your computer with viruses... I don't doubt for a second that this is just so people will buy media off itunes instead. The best way to go about infecting your Mac right now is to download an illegal copy of iWork or Photoshop. I'm sure they're readily available on Limewire, so there's actually a legitimate basis for this advice. So you're saying ALL illegal copy's have virus's? Sounds like something the makers of iWork of Photoshop would say to scare people from downloading. Not saying I condone downloading, but that's probably BS. Yeah, that is BS. That would be why I didn't say "all illegal copies carry viruses." However, they are two applications which have been known to carry a trojan when downloaded from illegal sources, and I'm not sure what other warez might carry unwanted hitchhikers. Some people just read whatever they want to read...

Actually, i read all that you posted, maybe you should try to clarify what you write, instead of generalizing things. You say there are 2 applications which have been known to carry a trojan.. Do you know how many versions of applications can be found on P2P software like limewire?    If you download a copy of software from one site, it is not automatically the exact same as every other copy out there. There are different versions, different cracks, different hackers, so just because one particular download of iWork has a virus, doesn't mean they all will.

It's a grey area. Macs aren't inherently invulnerable to viruses - as it's been said, it's way more lucrative to target the windows userbase and that's what hackers do.

Trojans along user stupidity however are as powerful a vector on Macs as it is on PCs tho.

I think Apple are going the wrong way about this, correlation suggests that consumers actually prefer their systems to have viruses.

 

As this graph plainly suggests, people are far more likely to buy an Operating System that has a virus. Why? Who knows... perhaps, consumers are growing bored of their 9-5 pace, and want to add a little spice to their life. Perhaps consumers just love living life to the edge.

The thing is though, I haven't seen a virus on Windows in years and I work in IT, have done for over 12 years now. My home PC which I run Vista on doesn't even have an antivirus on it because while it is connected to the net, I don't do much web browsing on it.

Now spyware or malware is a different story all together, I think part of the reason you don't see as many malicious viruses any more is because it's easier to make money out of malware turning your PC into a spam bot or getting you to pay for fake antispyware software than it is out of hacking and trying to break someones system.