Avoiding Malware in Macintosh

Avoiding Malware in Macintosh

There is an increase in the rise of Macintosh malwares and therefore there is an urgent need to guard from them. However, there is no perfect solution to be away from malwares but you can use some common sense to minimize the chances of encountering with them.

Safety tips

File attachment is the common way for the spreading of malwares. Whenever you receive a mail from someone with whom you are not acquainted then I would suggest you to be very careful while opening the mail. Even If you are familiar with a person I do not see any reason as to why that file should not be of malwares. Hence it is always required that you take precautions while opening email attachments.

Whenever I receive any attachments from my friends I check the content of the mail before opening the file. If the content does not mention any attachments then I do not open the file and instead send a reply to them conforming whether they had sent a file or not. I know it sounds awkward but it is better to be safe than sorry.

Another way of getting into a malware attack is by opening files through instant messages. Just because you are chatting with your friend it does not have to be that the file is clean. Just ask your friend what the file is about and if you are still not sure then it is better to avoid it. Just because the file has the extension of well known files it does not mean they are the same.

Type of file to be aware of

Pay close attention to the type of the file you have received. It could be that you were expecting a PDF file but unfortunately you have received an application. If this is the case then beware of it as there are high chances for the presence of Malwares.

Here are some of the file types that could contain malwares:

Rich Text Format (RTF) document

Plain text document

JPEG image

PDF document

M4A file

M4P file

MP3 audio file

Movie file

Malware Havens for Macintosh

As per a report by pcworld.com it has listed the 17 places through which you can get malwares:

Malicious Flash based sites

Twitter

Email Attachments

Torrent Sites

Porn Sites

Online Video Sites

Geolocation Sites (malware for your iPhone)

Search Engines (Google tries to warn you about hazardous sites)

Downloads (such as PDF, and other files)

Video Download Sites

Hacked Legitimate Sites

Fake Antivirus popups

Fraudulent ads on Sites

Facebook Apps

Email Address Acquisition sites

Phishing on Social Networks

Over sharing your own information

Just keep an eye on the types of attachments you get and you can minimize the risk of being affected by Malwares.

Compre to Windows computers, Macintosh don't have a lot of Malware and this is a big reason why we should love Macintosh computers!

Tags: Macintosh OS X, Protecting Macintosh