For users of A Sea of Blue being redirected to a fake virus scanner

If you download the “virus scanner”, it absolutely might.

it hasnt happened on my pc, but I was at my sons one day last week, went to this site, and all hell broke loose, I dont think they’ve had any problems tho, I sure hope not

The Mac OS is based on UNIX (actually the NeXT variant with many changes), but it is essentially a UNIX-like OS with a fancy UI over the top, much like my Linux distribution is a UNIX-like OS with a fancy UI over the top.

Most, but not all, viruses and exploits like that are designed to affect Microsoft operating systems. It is possible to write viruses for UNIX, but as a general proposition, unless your system is acting as a server, they are much harder to deploy due to the system architecture.

That’s the long answer. The short answer is “most likely not.”

Kidding of course, I just found this and Glenn’s response to be sort of funny as some of my friends and I got into a similar conversation recently about Mac’s vs. PC and such. Most of the conversation went right over my head as my husband is the techie in our house, it’s certainly not me and you might as well talk to me in Chinese rather than techie-talk, but it’s sort of funny that that conversation actually ended up being pretty ugly as my Mac geek friends (love them, though!) are pretty proud of their Mac’s (all their Apple products actually). Proud as in if you own anything else you are using the wrong product.

Technology is another one of those things right along with religion and politics that shouldn’t be discussed among friends, I guess.

Oh, and just for reference as to the issues — I don’t own a Mac, I use Firefox as my browser and I haven’t had any issues with virus’s and such. My husband has anti-virus stuff on my computer (again, I don’t do this, he does) so maybe that caught it for me?

SBNation is a very heavy platform, so if you are comparing SBN sites to KSR (who uses Wordpress) or other blog sites like that, yes, we will be slower.

This fancy platform is very heavy on the client side compared to some others, but that’s the price you pay for all the functionality it delivers.

isn’t very impressed with that.

A hunting buddy of mine in Paducah actually navigated to their site a couple of years ago. That was a major mistake. Once there, he couldn’t get off. His computer was really screwed up. he wound up buying another one. They even sent him a nasty email at one point. Him getting screwed is why I was aware of them. Each time I have one, I put it on my forbidden list and it gets quarantined if it tries again.

About 5 years ago there was a particularly nasty bit of spyware and crippleware that was pretending to be Norton Anti-Virus. My best guess is that kydamcat’s buddy had it infect his machine and didn’t realize it wasn’t actually Norton.

Just for those curious, how these fake Anti-virus scams work is that they function as a trojan. They fool you into “scanning your computer for viruses” but in reality are installing other trojans deeper into your system. At this point, they will either try and get you to pay to have “your computer cleaned” by their application or simply they could be gathering your personal information.

Here is some very basic tips.

 1. Use Firefox (or Opera, or Safari, etc.) instead of Internet Explorer. While IE is better than it used to be, it is still FAR more vulnerable than other free alternatives.

2. Do not ever click on any pop-up ads. Never. I don’t care if they are from a reputable source. Pop-Up ads are an evil upon the internet and even legit companies should not profit from using them.

3. Don’t download free or shareware unless you know the source is legit.

One last thing. I have heard from people over and over that once their computer became infected, they had to buy a new computer. If your computer is hosed, you can always take the nuclear option and simply reformat your hard drive and reinstall the operating system. This will take your computer back to how it was when you pulled it out of the box. There are occasions that a virus could physically break your computer, but in 99.9999% of cases this has not happened.

Ok. That is my PSA for the day.

that is not really the case. There are OS X versions of MS Office, Photoshop and most programs. Specifically, Adobe will provide you with a crossgrade version for free. Basically you just call Adobe, tell them that you now own a Mac, and they will provide you with a key for the OS X version. I did that for my copy of Adobe Master Suite. Microsoft will not provide you with such a license but you can either buy a new copy of MS Office for OS X for about $80.

Also, you can run Windows on your Mac, if there is a program that you simply have to have.

As for your scanners and printers. I would be shocked if there are not OS X drivers for each. I also have three scanners, two of which cost in excess of $3000 a piece. I used to own a company that scanned documents for other businesses and I never found a scanner (or printer) that didn’t have OS X drivers.

People should by the system that works best for them. But it is a myth that most programs or peripherals won’t run on a Mac. In fact, the only program that I have run across that it was an issue was a proprietary sales tracking program for a small company. For that guy, we just bought a copy of VM Fusion (a MS Windows virtualization program) and he was running the program within OS X and never looked back.