Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 78 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#11

Post by jbob2000 »

tekstar wrote: post #3

I don't run traditional antivirus but I do run: https://objective-see.com/products/blockblock.html (free) Detects when software attempts to install itself to run at startup and lets you block the registration. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html (paid) detects, reports, blocks applications connecting to the internet. https://adguard.com/en/welcome.html (paid) High quality adblocker for safari.

I am super skeptical about ad guard and I'm looking for someone to allay that skepticism. It's just... too clean. I don't trust software this perfect, especially since it's made in Russia and sees all the internet traffic on my computer.

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#12

Post by binaryanomaly »

gaius wrote: post #6

I use BitDefender, which also has various web privacy features and a VPN. However it interacts annoyingly with RStudio despite being told repeatedly to trust it.

BitDefender is quite a pain if it ever gets in your way. They really did a bad job there wouldn't buy it again.

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#13

Post by czbond »

If you are an employee or contractor - your risk is higher than you might think. As an employee, if you do 'non-work' activity on your laptop that compromises it's integrity - you could be at actual monetary/legal risk. I would highly recommend you have one. Also, as a contractor you run a higher risk. With Mac, configure your built in firewall. Run a "paid for" version of Bitdefender or other. Use VPN ad blocking. Use LTE connections, not wi-fi, for VPN connections.

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#14

Post by drdaeman »

czbond wrote: post #13

If you are an employee or contractor - your risk is higher than you might think. As an employee, if you do 'non-work' activity on your laptop that compromises it's integrity - you could be at actual monetary/legal risk. I would highly recommend you have one. Also, as a contractor you run a higher risk. With Mac, configure your built in firewall. Run a "paid for" version of Bitdefender or other. Use VPN ad blocking. U…

> Use LTE connections, not wi-fi, for VPN connections

I'd get it for non-VPN, but for VPN connections - how does it matter? As long as peers properly authenticate each other, of course.

> If you are an employee or contractor - your risk is higher

Higher than whose risk?

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#16

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

It is my considered opinion that "no anti-virus" is still the best practice for nearly everything. About the only place it makes any sense is in your email filters or anywhere else the public can send random bullshit.

At best they incur an ever present performance hit while only catching the lowest of low-hanging fruit. At worst they are constantly getting in your way with false positives (which train you to ignore any potentially legitimate alerts) and breaking everything. And the for profit ones tend toward the latter, because if you never notice it you won't believe it is actually doing anything and might not continue your subscription.

You might be thinking "that's all well and good for us computer geeks who know what's what, but what about everyone else?". Most people aren't as dumb as your ego likes to imagine them to be. They may not know the details of how their computers work but they know sketchy looking crap when they see it. And if they are that dumb then nothing will help them anyway.

No matter how you slice it, the cost/benefit pretty much never favors AV.

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#18

Post by rb808 »

My approach is to make my PC disposable. With all cloud services its a lot easier than it used to be. IE

* Working code in github

* Photos in offline multiple HDD

* Docs in cloud servers and important ones printed out.

This way I dont really care if I get a virus, or gets stolen, or destroyed in fire or HDD crash etc. I actually locked myself out of my encrypted laptop and it didnt really matter - I just reinstalled everything.

I also think anti-virus is more trouble than its worth now, but am more assured as above.

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#19

Post by elif »

drdaeman wrote: post #14
czbond wrote: post #13

If you are an employee or contractor - your risk is higher than you might think. As an employee, if you do 'non-work' activity on your laptop that compromises it's integrity - you could be at actual monetary/legal risk. I would highly recommend you have one. Also, as a contractor you run a higher risk. With Mac, configure your built in firewall. Run a "paid for" version of Bitdefender or other. Use VPN ad blocking. U…

> Use LTE connections, not wi-fi, for VPN connections I'd get it for non-VPN, but for VPN connections - how does it matter? As long as peers properly authenticate each other, of course. > If you are an employee or contractor - your risk is higher Higher than whose risk?

No idea if this is was the commenter was implying, but I think the advice is because plenty of apps can send requests in the 1 second initial window as you authenticate your VPN.

In theory, that could be sensitive data or enable a sophisticated attacker to correlate you with your VPN exit (if you were using it for pseudo-anonymity).

I don't think key negotiation is compromised in any way...

Re: Ask HN: Is no anti-virus software still best practice for mac?

#20

Post by protomyth »

Normally, I would say no, but recently, I've been thinking a bit differently on the matter. At minimum a good ad blocker is needed, and even with that some things are getting through. If the general technical experience level of the user is low to medium, I would seriously consider a virus protector.

On the same note, Deep Freeze for those of you who have to deal with a bunch of Windows machines in a lab or library situation is amazing.

Post reply on HN