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So what's the alternative for third party AV vendors? Do you have any suggestion for my parents?

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> So what's the alternative for third party AV vendors Probably, "die." I'm not sure we'll miss them; that whole market is sketchy, and more obsolete every year as the OS gets more secure on its own.
- self_awareness 7y ago
  How does that answer my question? I would like to know what is the alternative today, not 10 years from now.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    In seriousness: Why do you need a third party AV today?
    - self_awareness 7y ago
      Several reasons. 1. My parents lost money in the Internet. They treat scam messages ("you've been hacked, we have discriminating stuff against you, give us bitcoins and we don't tell anyone") seriously. They wanted to buy some wonder drug that didn't even exist. Now they contact me in every case that involves money on the Internet, and since several years there were a few other cases where I had to say "don't do it, this is a scam". So I'm effectively performing the role of a human thirdparty AV. 2. My girlfriend has been hit with a clickjacking compaign. She was crushed; I want to lessen the chance of this happening ever again. I've also educated her about it and how it works, so she will probably not do it anymore, but in the scale of whole humanity, the "let's teach them how to defend" is not a good strategy for trying to eliminate some harmful event, there will always be people that will resist learning. 3. I want to help with limiting spreading malware. If I'm using AV, this means that I influence the environment I live in so that everyone sees lower malware spread. This means people like you can wonder what is the point in AV tools, since you probably don't know even 1 person that had been hit with malware attack. Similar to vaccines I guess.
smcleod 7y ago
You shouldn’t be installing third party antivirus on macOS (or BSD/Linux for that matter), they are little more than another path the kernel and root user space. MacOS has its own built in malware / virus protection.
- self_awareness 7y ago
  What should I say to my parents when they enter a website that advertises some kind of diabetes wonder drug and they download some crap and try to run it? That they shouldn't install AV because it potentially opens an attack vector? Do you think they will know what it means? Also, do you mean XProtect? https://eforensicsmag.com/72717-2/ https://eforensicsmag.com/72717-2/

> So what's the alternative for third party AV vendors Probably, "die." I'm not sure we'll miss them; that whole market is sketchy, and more obsolete every year as the OS gets more secure on its own.

self_awareness 7y ago
How does that answer my question? I would like to know what is the alternative today, not 10 years from now.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  In seriousness: Why do you need a third party AV today?
  - self_awareness 7y ago
    Several reasons. 1. My parents lost money in the Internet. They treat scam messages ("you've been hacked, we have discriminating stuff against you, give us bitcoins and we don't tell anyone") seriously. They wanted to buy some wonder drug that didn't even exist. Now they contact me in every case that involves money on the Internet, and since several years there were a few other cases where I had to say "don't do it, this is a scam". So I'm effectively performing the role of a human thirdparty AV. 2. My girlfriend has been hit with a clickjacking compaign. She was crushed; I want to lessen the chance of this happening ever again. I've also educated her about it and how it works, so she will probably not do it anymore, but in the scale of whole humanity, the "let's teach them how to defend" is not a good strategy for trying to eliminate some harmful event, there will always be people that will resist learning. 3. I want to help with limiting spreading malware. If I'm using AV, this means that I influence the environment I live in so that everyone sees lower malware spread. This means people like you can wonder what is the point in AV tools, since you probably don't know even 1 person that had been hit with malware attack. Similar to vaccines I guess.

smcleod 7y ago

You shouldn’t be installing third party antivirus on macOS (or BSD/Linux for that matter), they are little more than another path the kernel and root user space. MacOS has its own built in malware / virus protection.

self_awareness 7y ago
What should I say to my parents when they enter a website that advertises some kind of diabetes wonder drug and they download some crap and try to run it? That they shouldn't install AV because it potentially opens an attack vector? Do you think they will know what it means? Also, do you mean XProtect? https://eforensicsmag.com/72717-2/ https://eforensicsmag.com/72717-2/