Anti-virus, firewalls and proxy servers

Posted by nigel on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 21:35 in Blogs 1849 2 comments | report

I have spent a couple of happy weeks writing and Web browsing on the MacBook and it seems to be going well. I'm still struggling with some of the keyboard combinations. Would it have been too much trouble to give us Home and End buttons? I realise how much I must use them on the PC. On the other hand I haven't noticed the lack of right mouse button yet!

But I'm still confused over some of these security issues. I only use webmail, which is well filtered so I don't have a big worry with spam. But should I be taking precautions with computer viruses? Most of the writers I have found on the Web don't seem to think viruses are a big risk on the Mac. OK, I'll buy that for the time being. But what about firewall and surfing protection generally. One of my clients runs his own rather complicated proxy server to protect all his Internet use - is that really necessary? I hope not, because I have no idea how to set one up or manage it.

I have my Mac firewall set at a fairly tight level, but I have no idea if it's good enough. I could install a third party Internet security suite I suppose, but that might well be £75 or so wasted if I don't need it.

Luckily Mac users seem to be a pretty friendly bunch so there's plenty of advice out there - it's just that they don't always agree!

Ah well, better keep on searching. In the meantime I'll continue to use my PC any time I need to use my credit card online as it has all the latest security software. At least with the PC I know I've done everything I can - with the Mac I'm still learning.

Comments

Little Snitch

jimwmackenzie | Fri, 03/07/2009 - 12:37 | Permalink

The one piece of security software for the Mac I can't live without is Little Snitch - available as a demo version which turns itself off every three hours, or as a paid for version. Alerts you to which connections your Mac is trying to make, and what is trying to connect to your Mac. It does help if you know what connections to expect, but that goes for most security software, for both Mac and PC.

Home and End?

Andy.D.B | Fri, 03/07/2009 - 13:02 | Permalink

Not sure if its the same on the MacBook but on the Pro you can use fn + left arrow for home, fn + right for end (up and down are your page up/down).

As for the whole security issue I've been using the Mac for a couple of years now and will always err to using the mac as opposed to windows for entering Credit Card info. Mainly because it seems I have to have chosen to add some nasty software, unlike windows which has a habit of adding malware in without me approving it (and hence not knowing its there).

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