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Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

> ...despite the widespread belief that they are virus-free, Macs aren't immune from invasive and dangerous malware.

I keep hearing this, but I never see evidence of these people. Is there a widespread belief that there's a widespread belief that Macs are immune from malware, despite few people who actually think this?

Well, I'm sure such people exist, but there don't seem to be many, even on sites like macrumors and /r/apple where mostly non-technical people with magical feelings for Apple gather and comment.

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I worked at a Geek Squad for two years, so definitely take my experience with a grain of salt, but at least in the world of big box retail chains, this was quoted so often by my customers and clients I lost count. Most of my clients that came in with an infection on their Mac (sometimes just a rogue browser extension, but often an honest bit of malware) were genuinely surprised, having purchased the Mac originally because it supposedly didn't have these "Windows" problems.

I suspect this is largely due in part to the types of clients that would actually purchase Geek Squad protection in the first place; my job duties had me working directly with "not computer people" folks most of the time. Still, the idea that Macs were immune to malware was pervasive; on several occasions, folks returned Windows machines they had just purchased (and managed to immediately infect) and picked up a Mac instead, thinking that this act alone would make them immune to their problems, or their kids online behavior, etc. Most folks were good sports about it though, realizing that they had been misled by advertising, and allowing me to explain good security habits to them during their visit.

I think the biggest thing that bothered me about the job, and the reason I eventually left for greener pastures (I presently work in Linux Administration) was the pervasive idea that you could fix computer problems by buying additional software. This is something retailers have latched on to, and it bugs me on a fundamental level. The only way to actually be more secure is to understand your tools, so that you can recognize when they are misbehaving.

> the biggest thing that bothered me about the job was the pervasive idea that you could fix computer problems by buying additional software

O my god yes. I worked in corporate IT and Management was sold on more complexity all. the. time.

I'd say macrumors and /r/apple are probably a better representation of the general public than other forms of contact you have with people. Realizing that viruses exist escapes some.

Apple even based a commercial on the premise a while back, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHFy6egYcUg

By now Windows also has a much stronger security model. So I'd say that the chances of anything happening would theoretically be about equal in Linux, Windows and Mac. But you'd have to take popularity into account, and since the Mac has become more popular, I'd guess they are a victim more often.

As long as Windows still tries to hide file extensions, the rest of its security barely matters. And in what way would its security model be better than MacOS or Linux? I'd say they are about the same nowadays.

Anecdotally, most non-technical Mac users seem to have better habits than Windows users. Updates get installed and shady software gets loaded up less frequently.

Apple literally had that in their ads.

They still do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRM31VRNQw0

That's iOS vs. Windows and we were taking about macOS.

I think that marketing language is a bit BS-y, though.

Probably the general idea they are pushing, that iOS is less susceptible to malware than a laptop, is probably true, so it doesn't bother me much.

Yes, but a decade or more ago. The security landscape and perceptions around it have changed.

Also, back then the difference between MacOS and Windows was pretty stark so this was a valid marketing point. Not that the ads didn't oversell it, of course.

Wrong. They still do:

https://www.apple.com/business/products-platform/

Nothing on that site makes the claim that Apple software is immune from malware. They claim that it's "secure", but that's relative anyways. All of the real iOS malware I know of abuses either jailbroken devices or enterprise provisionings. The standard infection case of "ran something you shouldn't have" or drive by downloading is a lot harder to pull off there.

You need to remember that when those ads aired Windows still ran everything as root and had genuine "viruses", not trojans or other malware. But a virus as in the definition of the term. That Macs and Linux had a sane security model really did make them essentially "immune to viruses" in a very real way.

Today, a genuine virus is a rare thing, most malware are trojans. But back then viruses were the dominant form of malware. It's quite unfair to criticize people claiming Macs don't get "viruses" by changing the context on them to include all malware. That's not the claim people made.

Those ads still ran in 2015 on apple.com.

By that time the user restriction model of Vista had existed for 8 years.

In the mid to late 2000s, this was something that was often repeated.

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