[Macworld]

Post your comments for McAfee protects your Mac without affecting performance here

[dominiquejames]

Mr. Fleishman, a Macworld review with a Macworld buying advise but without a Macworld rating?

[honkj]

do you mean this "McAfee" (see below)????? you have just increased Mac user's chances of losing data by 1 million times.... that is how often that AV software destroy's data on any form of PC's every single year for the past 6 years.....

you have done your readers a disservice, and someone will lose data by listening to you.... where they would have zero problems without AV software and simply being slightly smarter than dirt when handling email and websites....

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McAfee apologizes for crippling PCs with bad update
Blames changes in testing for letting buggy update get loose; users want to hear CEO say 'sorry'

April 23, 2010
Computerworld - McAfee Inc. apologized late Thursday for crippling thousands of customers' computers with a flawed update the day before.

"I want to apologize on behalf of McAfee and say that we're extremely sorry for any impact the faulty signature update file may have caused you and your organizations," said Barry McPherson, the security vendor's executive vice president of support and customer service, in a post to the company's blog near midnight yesterday.

It was the first apology by a McAfee executive for the fiasco, which started early Wednesday when an antivirus signature update wrongly quarantined a critical Windows system file after identifying it as a low-threat virus.
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another AV vendor's stupidity on a Mac AV product: (worse, Apple patches regularly, so every single malware threat is included in OSX definitions already, and are regularly updated every 24 hours)

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After trumpeting the Inqtana-A virus just days ago and making a big deal out of this worm that relies on a security flaw patched by Apple over half a year ago, anti-virus vendor Sophos has now taken another bold step towards the grave.

Their update for the Inqtana-B virus identity file incorrectly flagged various Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Reader files, to name just a few, which led to data loss for many of the program's users. Hundreds and in many cases thousands of files were erroneously flagged as being infected, and, depending

on the settings of the users, were then deleted. In several cases the spread of the 'infected files' was so great that after the 'disinfection' the systems were left all but useless.

The Mac community is in an uproar after this incident, which only served to bring up memories of the problems encountered with Norton's Anti-Virus Software. The fact that the Inqtana-B problem the update was supposed to address was so remote only puts the integrity and moral practices of Mac anti-virus program vendors under scrutiny.

The two 'viruses' and the 'extremely critical' OS X flaw all combined did not even cause a fraction of the damage the Sophos software did.
The Leap-A worm infected less than a hundred machines, and of those, all had been willing infections on behalf of testers and researchers; the Inqtana-A worm had spread even less seeing how Apple had closed the hole it needed more than half a year ago.
After the entire media was in an uproar about how threatened OS X now is because of the high public profile, the most damage is still coming from companies and programs who are supposed to be preventing the damage in the first place.

At the end of the day, the only questions that begs to be asked is: Did the people at Sophos even test their software? At least once? How could this happen? Who will protect Mac users from the anti-virus companies?

[drgmac]

Forced to use this via university-wide contract. In our department with about 400 Macs, every two weeks, we see a computer with the CPU activity pegged by the MacAfee EPO Agent, in the background crashing and restarting every 10 seconds. The uninstaller doesn't completely uninstall the product, either.
Would like to be anonymous for obvious reasons.

[Glenn_Fleishman]

dominiquejames, on 25 November 2011 - 05:27 AM, said:

Mr. Fleishman, a Macworld review with a Macworld buying advise but without a Macworld rating?

Fixed.

[goldenthal]

Does McAfee bill like some of its competitors? You know, $x for the program + annual taxes to keep using the virus definitions even if no upgrade to the program is issued or bought. If so, I shan't be buying McAfee either; 3 levels of annual taxation are sufficient for me.

Back in the day, both McAfee and Norton would charge for the program and for each program update, but the definitions were both free and posted. Then Intego changed all that, so I stopped using Intego, &c. . . .

Jeremy

[JasonBush]

Sorry McAfee for the Mac is absolute trash. We deployed to 200+ machines and it did nothing, but make the systems useless after a few days. The support is awful as well. I think they have one guy who knows anything about a Mac. Get Sophos if you need AV.

[Kees]

Any app that is launched for the first time already requires confirmation from OS X itself. This and some common sense, in addition to having Little Snitch installed to control outgoing network connections, imo, is plenty protection. Doesn't require monthly fees either.

[JohnDavis2sd7]

The best protection against Trojans is your own common sense.

The only reason anyone might need this software is, as Glenn points out, to protect their Windows friends.

Until they get Macs of their own, that is.

[Glenn_Fleishman]

Kees, on 26 November 2011 - 01:47 AM, said:

Any app that is launched for the first time already requires confirmation from OS X itself. This and some common sense, in addition to having Little Snitch installed to control outgoing network connections, imo, is plenty protection. Doesn't require monthly fees either.

Mac OS X doesn't provide this level of granular control. You can either agree to launch the app forever or not. McAfee lets you deny a single launch, provide permission once or always, and with or without network access. If you think you need that sort of control, then McAfee provides it. I'm not convinced it's needed, but there are cases to be made for that.

[macomania]

I totally agree with the person that says that if you are not stupid about where you go, you don't need the software. As an ex windows user, one of the reason (of many) that I switched to Mac is to not have to deal with the complication of anti virus software, the slowdowns, little user friendly, and extra costs.
I think apple is well aware of these advantages, and would be fast to create a patch or antidote to any harmful virus that targets the Mac owners.
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[Mactechfreak]

Mr. Glenn Fleishman, I am seriously considering stopping my MacWorld Subscription due to this write up!! I expect a higher standard from the Mac Community and you my friend have just lowered the bar with this nonesense article.
I also will be making sure that you haven't written any "Take Control of" books that me or my family buy in the future!

This post has been edited by Mactechfreak: 26 November 2011 - 10:24 PM

[Glenn_Fleishman]

Mactechfreak, on 26 November 2011 - 10:20 PM, said:

Mr. Glenn Fleishman, I am seriously considering stopping my MacWorld Subscription due to this write up!! I expect a higher standard from the Mac Community and you my friend have just lowered the bar with this nonesense article.
I also will be making sure that you haven't written any "Take Control of" books that me or my family buy in the future!

It's hard for me to understand what you object to without having specific points to discuss. I tested the software over several weeks, and found that despite my disinterest in having anti-virus/anti-malware/etc software installed, that the other parts of the package were quite useful, such as the granular but easy-to-use firewall, which is useful for blocking access to services you might leave open on a home or office network but want restricted when using a hotspot.

In testing on 2011 MacBook Air, I didn't see the slowdowns or CPU pegging mentioned by two pseudonymous and first-time posters who manage "200" and "400" Macs in their enterprise running this software. It is possible McAfee software causes problems with CPU usage, but I can only report on first-hand experience in reviewing software.

This post has been edited by Glenn_Fleishman: 27 November 2011 - 10:17 PM

[ropenner]

How about, who cares if we pass on windows viruses to other windows computers. Maybe they should change how they do things. I went to Mac because I do not have to have a virus scanner, deep freeze and stupid spyware. I like millions of others have lived happily with out windows for a long time. We just do not need them any more.