An open community 
of Macintosh users,
for Macintosh users.

FineTunedMac Dashboard widget now available! Download Here

Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Sophos Anti-Virus
#21721 04/26/12 05:24 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 4
grelber Offline OP
OP Offline

Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 4
Finally decided to install an AV app, namely Sophos, which offers a free home edition for the Mac. This version is 8.0.2.
It immediately downloaded over 11 MB worth of 'updates' (which I presume are the honking big list of virus/worm/Trojan descriptions available to date). Sophos claims to be protecting against 3,479,000+ threats at the moment.
Now it's scanning ca 2 million items on all my local drives (including backup); this is likely to take 8 hours. So far no 'threats'.*

* And it just now finished scanning everything — ca 5.5 hours — and found nothing nasty to report.

I probably should have dropped this into THE CYBER-SECURITY THREAD in the Lounge where most of the discussion is taking place; but this is specific to a brand, so I dropped it here. If a moderator thinks it needs a different 'home', I've got no objection.

Last edited by grelber; 04/26/12 09:11 PM. Reason: Update
Re: Sophos Anti-Virus
grelber #21723 04/26/12 06:04 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 16
Moderator
Online
Moderator

Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 16
Sophos has a good reputation, but don't get too comfortable and let your guard down. As Tacit has pointed out on several occasions more and more of the new malware is undetectable by any anti-virus software and no malware can be detected unless it has been identified and its code "signature" added to the virus signature database on your Mac.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Sophos Anti-Virus
joemikeb #21730 04/26/12 09:03 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 4
grelber Offline OP
OP Offline

Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 4
Good point. Never have, never will be (too) complacent.
On my older system I used Norton AV, but that apparently became a liability in Mac OS X.
The local university's IT services uses Sophos AV to cover their users' butts. wink

Re: Sophos Anti-Virus
grelber #21744 04/27/12 11:36 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 1
Offline

Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 1
Originally Posted By: grelber
Finally decided to install an AV app, namely Sophos, which offers a free home edition for the Mac. This version is 8.0.2.
It immediately downloaded over 11 MB worth of 'updates' (which I presume are the honking big list of virus/worm/Trojan descriptions available to date).

That could account for its reputation as "bloatware". I've read more positive things about ClamXV than Sophos, but have used neither.

Re: Sophos Anti-Virus
Gregg #21751 04/28/12 02:05 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 2
Offline

Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 2
OS10.5.8 imac 4Gb ram
I have used sophos but it really slowed down my computer. I googled ClamXV and I got positive reports. I have been using it for about 3 months now and a good feature that you can put whatever you like in the sidebar and scan that item.
Particularly good for new downloads, & mail.
jaybass


OS 13.6.4 iMac (Retina 5K, 27", 2017, 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5, 24 GB RAM, 2400 MHz DDR4. SuperDuper. 1 TB Lacie HD

Moderated by  alternaut, dianne, dkmarsh 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.4
(Release build 20200307)
Responsive Width:

PHP: 7.4.33 Page Time: 0.019s Queries: 24 (0.014s) Memory: 0.5887 MB (Peak: 0.6554 MB) Data Comp: Zlib Server Time: 2024-03-28 21:41:02 UTC
Valid HTML 5 and Valid CSS