r/applehelp

Mac Malware and "Viruses"

So as Macs become more and more popular these days, we are faced with a new threat (or rather, minor annoyance)... Malware! This guide will attempt to provide advice as to how to avoid becoming infected with malware, as well as how to clean up if infections do occur.

Staying Safe

The best defense against your Mac becoming infected is simply to exercise responsibility in downloading and installing software. All known forms of malware for Mac OS X require explicit user consent to be installed, so before giving such consent to any software, take care to ensure it will not come back to haunt you:

• Stick to installing software via the App Store as much as possible, as well as apps from developers registered with Apple. For more info on this, see this "Protect your Mac from malware" document from Apple.
• Only download and install plugins or other software by seeking out the primary source (i.e. doing a web search for "Java" if you are told your Java needs to be updated).
• If you would like to install any other interesting-looking application, but are unsure of how trustworthy it is, do a quick web search on it or ask the /r/AppleHelp community if they know anything about it.

Antivirus Software

There are various options for Mac antivirus software, each which run in the background and hopefully remove any suspicious files as they appear. However, given the current scarcity of such threats, these solutions will generally consume more resources than they will ever save, and as such are not generally necessary.

If you would still like to be exhaustively protected by running antivirus software in the background, the solutions tested to be the most thorough are as follows:

For a comparison of these and other solutions, see this rundown by The Safe Mac, or ask the /r/AppleHelp community for further advice.

Adware Removal

So the worst has happened, and your system has become infected... Odds are you're experiencing annoyances such as an inordinate amount of advertising in webpages, your browser's default search engine changing itself, etcetera. The good news is that adware removal is a trivial process.

Most adware comes in the form of a simple browser extension, so your first step should be to consult the list of these items you have installed:

• In Safari, select "Preferences" from the Safari menu, then navigate to "Extensions."
• In Chrome, select "More Tools" > "Extensions" from the toolbar's menu.
• In Firefox, select "Add-ons" from the "Tools" menu.

If none of the items you see turn out to be the culprits, then the installed files are strewn elsewhere across the system. The easiest way to remove this type of adware is to run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, which maintains an index of the files associated with all known adware such that it can remove them.

Of course, if you run into any trouble during the removal process, or have any other questions along the way, once more don't hesitate to ask the /r/AppleHelp community!