On the heels of this spring’s flashback virus infecting hundreds of thousands of Macs, Apple seems to have changed its tune about viruses and security on the Mac. Apple has officially changed the “it doesn’t get PC viruses” to “it’s built to be safe” on its website. Originally spotted by the fine folks over at PCWorld, Apple’s “Why You’ll Love A Mac” page now reads a little more realistically.
Can Macs gets viruses? If you own a Mac, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve been approached by a couple dozen curious bystanders with questions about Apple’s security record over the last five years. While any sane individual would recognize that a virus could happen at any moment, whether it’s likely or not, word seemed to spread that the Mac was a virus-free computing platform. In fact, Apple itself stated that “it doesn’t get PC viruses” on its own website, although they were likely playing loose and fast with the definition of PC virus, and likely meant that OS X will not contract Windows based viruses. It was still misleading.
We’ve been saying, seemingly since our humble beginnings, that OS X isn’t a mythical virus-free zone where users don’t have to worry about viruses, malware, trojans, and all that other stuff. Nope, all along we’ve been telling our fine readers that they need to be careful out there and protect their systems with sound practices like never opening random attachments in your email, and keeping your system and applications fully patched.
Those practices still apply. Be safe out there.
