Best Mac Antivirus for OSx Yosemite 10.10.5

[Paul S4]

I have a 2010 MacMini that was "re-built" last year by an independent mac technician due to OEM hard drive failure.

OSx Yosemite 10.10.5 was installed as that is sufficient for what I do.

I have the AVG free installed, but is there a better free AV out there that would do a better job ?

I realise that Mac OS systems are more secure, but can I install a better one?

I am not a techie by the way !
Any advice welcome !

[P4ulB]

Big fan of Sophos Home edition - free, no ad's in your face and works a treat.

https://home.sophos.com/

[gregs656]

It would be free for you to upgrade to High Sierra if it's a mid-2010 or later Mini.

By keeping it as up to date as you can you benefit from a not insignificant amount of on-going security improvements.

Edited by gregs656 on Sunday 4th March 14:39

[Murph7355]

Been using OSX for 16yrs and never installed any. Never had an issue.

[megaphone]

Ditto, not had anything installed on any of my Macs for 15 years. I've have tried Sophos on my iMac, it does slow browsing down a bit, opening stuff up can be a little slow. I removed it. It only ever detected a few virus and trojans in some dodgy email attachments that went straight to the junk folder anyway.

[NDA]

I bought my two Macs (MacBook and iMac) in 2013. I've never installed anti virus and have never had a problem - not once. I have occasionally ended up on some pretty dreadful websites too. Accidentally. Obviously.

[Troubleatmill]

Bitdefender - always scores very highly in independent tests.
Many others are less consistent.

[Brainpox]

I think the comments about not needing anything are fairly justified if you're running an up to date OS.

10.10 is nearly four years old now though and there could be exploits that Apple won't fix.

The only problem is if these third-party programs can't detect them...

[jmorgan]

I would be concerned running older software especially as there has been some patches recently for some naughty stuff.

However, if I were passing on documents then I would use a checker. I do not do this so I do not use one, the biggest issue I think with a Mac is the user going to certain sites or not having certain features turned on and opening programs and stuff from unknown places.

Malwarebytes does mac now.

[C&C]

P4ulB said:

Big fan of Sophos Home edition - free, no ad's in your face and works a treat.

https://home.sophos.com/

I'm also using Sophos Home and have no problem with it.
I have several friends and colleagues with Macs that are not running anything and have not had issues, but I take the approach that a little extra protection doesn't do any harm.

The only thing I've noticed is that when running a Time Machine backup to USB connected disk, the AV has a significant impact on the speed of the backup, so I'll temporarily disable it to run the backup, then re-enable it immediately afterwards. I know Time Machine only copies across changes, but this can be a significant amount of data in my case as I download quite a lot of RAW image files and video from the DSLR.

The other software I run is Ublock on Safari and Chrome, which seems to do a good job of preventing loads of pop up ads appearing everywhere.

ETA:
Also what has been mentioned about updating the O/S is sensible. Only reason I can think of not to do so is if you have a specific piece of software that you need to run and it has not been updated to run on High Sierra?

Edited by C&C on Monday 5th March 12:38

[Scobblelotcher]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

That’s a curious statement that AV can’t protect from Meltdown, did you mean on OSX or just in general?

Whilst I largely agree with your statement it’s worth pointing out OSX and apps (specifically) browsers are not invulnerable to malware although the risk is fairly low, it’s still entirely possible to get infected. For those not running any AV, how do you know you don’t have malware on your Mac (well unless xprotect gets it)? Most malware these doesn’t obviously show itself.

I’ve used both Sophos and Malwarebytes in corporate environments and both are excellent and non intrusive. Given both are free and not in anyway resource intensive it’s hard to argue against their use. The other useful feature of running AV on OSX is to watch for files being sent to you which may have Windows malware in them, it never goes down well if you forward that same attachment to an unwitting third party and they get infected.

[jmorgan]

From reading about it, I usually look to see what launch deamons are kicking around and check with etre check. However it did bring up some persistent start up and little snitch reporting connection attempts. They were virus checkers I had tried then deleted.

[ZesPak]

Murph7355 said:

Been using OSX for 16yrs and never installed any. Never had an issue.

Been using OSX and Windows for 20 years without AV, no virus ever.
A real OSX virus has a hard time because it has to spread through windows because it wouldn't get very far otherwise, they are very rare because of this.

Most of the things you'd call a "virus" is malware that is installed when you click to install something. Often hidden but mostly installed by people just clicking "yes" because they want a free movie/music.

If you have a young girl in the house, the chances of this happening rise by about 500%.

[Bikerjon]

I fix quite a lot of my customers Mac's and malware is fairly common. I always install anti-virus now where as only a couple of years ago I probably wouldn't. For windows I wouldn't dare run a machine without AV! I tend to use Bitdefender for Mac's as several of the other products I tried actually caused more problems than they fixed!

I'd say the OP really needs to consider updating OSX as a first step though.

Edited by Bikerjon on Monday 5th March 16:23

[anonymous-user]

I used to use Sophos on my iMac but changed to AVG about a year ago. Just found AVG had less performance issues on boot-up.