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Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition
#36976 11/04/15 04:18 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
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Joined: Aug 2009
I'm going to rant a little here about this product:

It's free, and that's nice. However, I am running LittleSnitch and there is not one thing you can do without Sophos AV for Mac Home Edition asking for port access non-stop, from Internet browsing to Mail. There must be at least 9 ports it asks you for when you first launch Firefox and if you deny them, it WON'T let you get online. If Ghostery is blocking cookies, it asks to access ports for Ghostery. So I tried Safari, which is a nightmare because when the opening page loads with previews of the sites Safari defaults to, you have to start opening ports for EVERY domain that loads a preview as well as all the social media tracking they do.

Yes, it's free and that is nice but I installed SAV to see if I was being tracked or if there was adware or a bot (yes, Macs get bots and I know because I got one several years ago) being left behind by the eku.edu spam, perhaps there is some more nefarious reason they are doing this besides phishing. And denying ports to Sophos keeps you offline. I can block, for example, Twitter or Facebook with LS and everything still loads, mail, etc. Deny access to SAV and you can't do one damn thing and I can't think of a good reason an AV has to do this except MAYBE you are a research 'lab rat' to build a database for them. Back to ClamX for me. It's $25 now, but even when it was shareware it never did this.

One more thing, when I hit "Scan this Mac" without asking it to scan peripherals or networks, it spent about a day going through my TM drive and never scanned my Mac until I excluded the TM drive. Big software glitch. I have nothing to hide, but if you want information pay for it. At least give technical support in return, but they don't.

I am open to any alternative explanation of why the product constantly asks for ports besides the one I have offered. Is it because LS is not catching these requests and SAV is? That is the only other reason that would make sense.

Last edited by dianne; 11/04/15 08:53 PM. Reason: Subject line changed.
Re: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition
slolerner #36980 11/04/15 05:38 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
Likes: 15
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Maybe more later, but right now I'll just point out that you need to edit the title of your thread. wink

Last edited by dianne; 11/04/15 08:55 PM. Reason: Subject line changed.

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Re: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition
slolerner #36983 11/04/15 06:08 PM
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I'm surprised you even got that far with Sophos. I tried using it only to find that just enabling slowed down everything, sometimes to almost dead in the water. Suffice it to say, it's been deleted.

Re: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition
grelber #36985 11/04/15 07:09 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
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Joined: Aug 2009
probably another one of those free windows av ripoffs that installs WINE and runs a generic AV scan on your mac, using an emulator to do the scan, looking for windows viruses....

complete waste of time and resources


I work for the Department of Redundancy Department
Re: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition
Virtual1 #36986 11/04/15 08:42 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
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Joined: Aug 2009
Moderator: Please correct the "auto-correct." Name in subject line S/B Sophos, not Sophia.

Originally Posted By: Grelber
I'm surprised you even got that far with Sophos. I tried using it only to find that just enabling slowed down everything, sometimes to almost dead in the water. Suffice it to say, it's been deleted.

Well, my rant may be the explanation of why it slowed down your computer...

Last edited by slolerner; 11/04/15 08:45 PM. Reason: More
Re: Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition
slolerner #37001 11/05/15 02:46 PM
Joined: Aug 2009
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Joined: Aug 2009
It seems I have not finished my rant yet. Sophos did not delete itself from LS list, just an exclamation point next to the program asking for access. The accessed ports were still open. i don't know if LS was supposed to clean that up..

That aside, with all that nonsense, ClamX today found a list of 28 infections. In the past, all it has mostly found is email with Windows exe's in email, duh, like that never happens! I will start a new string with a list of what ClamX found for your opinions, but it looks like a nuke and pave is in order.


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