[mytoyota]

Around noon today I got a call from my bank asking about some charges on my CC. Most of them checked out as mine, but some didn't. Somehow someone got my CC # and everything to go with it. I think I got most of the problem sorted out. My question is what can I do to see if my computer has some sort of spyware or anything similar on it? Everybody lists software for PCs but it is much harder to find stuff for MACs. Right now I'm running 10.2.8. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks Eli

[car1son]

I've never seen a report of a spyware app on a Mac that was installed by stealth over the internet. I don't think you need to worry about that.
(There are some spy applicaions, such as MonitoredX and KeyLogger for the Mac, but these are installed from the Mac itself. They are the kind of thing a parent, boss, suspicious spouse or obnoxious roommate might put in place. If you are the only one with access to your Mac, you don't need to worry about those, either.)
You need to be careful what internet sites you trust enough to enter your credit card. Even if they have a secure site - is the retailler itself legit? You should never send your credit card data in eMail.
You need to be careful not to respond to "Phishing" email scams. There are quite a few scam artists sending out eMail masquerading as from eBay and PayPal (and probably other sites) asking that you verify your security information. (I'm getting - and ignoring - a couple of these a day lately.) But the link in those eMails actually goes to a thief's site that looks exactly like eBay or PayPal - but isn't. If you click the link and "re-enter your credit card information", the crook has your card.
Of course your card info may have been stolen off-line, too.

[Nobody]

Can someone please tell me what the best available spyware removal software is for Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther"?

Thank you,
Kevin D.

[schokid02]

You can check this link, though I think, in general, it's a waste of time. Spyware on Macs is not an issue. Period.

[lmeier1962]

I used to think Spyware wasn't an issue, but Spyware is an issue on my MacBook. SpywareMaster to be specific. And I'm not booting up into Windows either. Somehow it loaded itself onto my MacBook and keeps popping up asking for a system scan, which I kill. I'm beginning to suspect that I got infected with Firefox vs. Safari, since I don't see any pop ups when I use Safari.

[Randy_B_Singer]

I can't find any listing for a "spywaremaster" on any of the respected malware tracking sites:



McAfee: <vil.mcafee.com/>
Symantec: <[http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/]>
<[http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/]>
F-Secure: <[http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/]>
<[http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/]>
Sophos Virus Analyses:
<[http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/]>
<[http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/]>
SecurityFocus: <[http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/]>



I've also never heard of a verified case of spyware infecting a Macintosh without the software having to be physically installed (complete with passwords.)



There are anti-spyware programs for the Macintosh, but if you are interersted in purchasing one, I'd also like to talk to you about selling you a bridge.



Little Snitch
[http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/]
MacScan
[http://macscan.securemac.com/]
Internet Cleanup
[http://www.allume.com/mac/cleanup/index.html]
HenWen
[http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/henwen.html]

[lmeier1962]

Hi, it seemed to infect my machine on a couple of occasions. But oddly, it seems that it lasts only as long as my Browser is actively loaded. It hasn't happened in quite a long time, but the next time I get popups and other crap when I shouldn't, I'll capture them and send them to you, deal? Maybe you will be the first to document something unique on the Mac. I don't have the time to track this crap down, my speciality for the past 25 years has been and continues to be COMM. I gave up the Unix stuff in '92, but my workhorse is still a Solaris Workstation. I keep toying with the Mac, but maybe next time it happens I'll fire up a Sniffer and see where the stuff originates as well. Then you can have it, you can play with the trace files. Enjoy.

Larry Meier
- not interested in bridges, just Comm Engineering.

[Randy_B_Singer]

>Hi, it seemed to infect my machine on a couple of occasions. But oddly, it seems that it lasts only as long as my Browser is actively loaded.

Which means that it wasn't spyware, a Trojan, or a virus, merely an annoying pop-up. You can turn pop-ups off in most browsers.

>It hasn't happened in quite a long time, but the next time I get popups and other crap when I shouldn't, I'll capture them and send them to you, deal?

Why don't you send anything that you find to one of the malware reporting agencies that I cited? They are the experts, and that's what they are there for. If they don't know of any spyware for the Macintosh, chances are excellent it doesn't exist. Please, don't go shouting "SPYWARE" when there isn't any.

[Grapho]

Their are several documented methods of obtaining credit card information that would not be related to your computer directly. As far as I know, their is no malware that can do this on the Mac at this point in time. Your information got compromised elsewhere.