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.

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

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

McAfee: <http://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

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Randy B. Singer Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions) Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

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.


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.

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Randy B. Singer Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions) Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html