DONMONTALVO  Not sure if that's a good idea, especially in an enterprise/education environment. Even if Mac viruses are few and far between, we are RESPONSIBLE to the other computers on the network (PCs, etc.) to ensure we stop the spread of these viruses. We simply set things up so active scanning is off and only these things get scanned:

1. downloads folder

2. expanding files

3. nightly scan

Don  
(Version 10/03/07)

PETER DA SILVA  First of all, if the virus is not active on your computer it's vanishingly unlikely to get stored on your computer anywhere it's even potentially transferrable to another computer to begin with.

Second, what mechanism are you proposing by which a virus would be transported from your computer to a susceptible computer in such a way that the susceptible computer would potentially be infected by the virus, and where there are not better mechanisms available than running antivirus software on your computer?

Files sitting on a shared folder? First, they won't infect anyone just sitting there. Second, you need to be able to scan them periodically from a central server anyway, to take care of network attached storage that can't run a local antivirus, so add them to the regular background scan.

Email? Your mail server should be doing the virus scan for you.

Memory sticks? Unless you deliberately put an autorun file in the root of the memory stick, it's just like a file on a share. It will be scanned when they plug it in.

The most important thing you can do to protect yourself and people around you is to disable "automatically open 'safe' files after downloading" in Safari.  
(Version 10/03/07)

DONMONTALVO  you obviously haven't worked in corporate environments where virus protection is a mandate. It's reckless and irresponsible to tell people to run without it.

Don  
(Version 10/03/07)

PETER DA SILVA  I've run one, and I only had to accept the mandate when they centralized IT.

We only had antivirus on specific systems that were likely to be a problem, our antivirus policy was mostly based on not running applications that were too risky. When they switched us to the corporate AV scheme and forced us to use risky applications (primarily IE) we had the first site-wide virus incident in five years within a week. We had several of them over the following two years until I left in 2005. And yet we were "technically" safer.

So what I'm saying is that antivirus is NOT the best solution anywhere, and certainly not on Mac.  
(Version 10/03/07)

DONMONTALVO  I've been managing Mac departments in Fortune 100 environments, Advertising, Marketing, Design, etc. firms for years. Your advice is not sound for business. Perhaps mom&pop shops or other privately held companies who are not responsible to shareholders can consider your suggestion.

It's the mac administrator's job to ensure compliance. Antivirus is part of a solid technology plan. Denying the need is a not very professional.

Sorry for being blunt but business does not take risk lightly.

Don  
(Version 10/03/07)

PETER DA SILVA  There's a lot of things that everyone knows that ain't so.

I wasn't the Mac administrator. We didn't have Macs. I was the Windows admin, with 150 developers, and most of them couldn't run any antivirus most of the time because of the effect it had on the development environment... all the problems that AV can cause in even the most conventional Windows environment were far far worse.

Even after we were "borged" we still had to run subnets without AV, with corporate approved firewalls, and those were the only parts of the network that were really secure. It wasn't until almost the time I left that we were able to find AV software that didn't screw with developers.

The head of IT in the US told me that we were the best run network in the company. So don't talk to me about "mom and pop" shops, "mom and pop" shops don't have 150 developers.

The cause of the virus flood that started in '97 and '98 was Internet Explorer and Outlook and the merge of the desktop and the Internet... we stayed out of that, and avoided the virus plague. Even when the rest of the company, thousands of employees, were regularly being shut down at least partially for half a day, a day, three days, ... we dodged the bullet. Why? Because we took action to keep from getting infected in the first place. We didn't join the Internet Explorer / Outlook virus-soup monoculture. I found the places in Windows that were wide open, from applications to network protocols, and jammed them closed. Do that and Windows is no worse off than any other OS.

If you company is too inflexible to bite the bullet and dump IE, I can understand. In the end, we were too. If corporate policy stands in the way, if you HAVE to run dangerous antivirus software on your Mac, I commiserate. But don't tell me that standardizing on broken software that's wide open to infection and then taking a "morning after" pill in the form of antivirus is "safe networking". It's no such thing.  
(Version 10/03/07)

PETER DA SILVA  PS: Mac viruses, these days, aren't just "few and far between". They're non-existent. There are no current OSX viruses propagating in the wild, and the closest thing to one that ever showed up was passed through an instant messenger program that you should be blocking at your corporate firewall.  
(Version 10/03/07)

DONMONTALVO  This isn't a developer forum.  
(Version 10/03/07)

ZANGIEF  It's not a forum at all, actually.  
(Version 11/14/07)

WONDERING  Intego VirusBarrier X

ClamXav

Tiger Cache Cleaner (which runs ClamXav)

Symantec Norton AntiVirus

as well as this McAfee Virex.

... in no particular order ...   
(Version 4/11/07)

ALEXF  I don't use AV, but I have to say...live and let live. Our wiser/paranoid fellows will have the last laugh one day :D  
(Version 8/09/06)

ZETSURIN  Ahhh, got to love the Mac owner complacency combined with a dash of smugness. There is little to stop a virus and or malware propagating within your home directory, so don't get too complacent just yet. As the OSX platform increases exposure you WILL have to start worrying about this.  
(Version 12/20/06)

MACUPDATE ADMIN  There is a very good and free software for OS X virus protection, it is ClamXav.  
(Version 12/14/05)

MARYW  Thanks, I saw that but it worried me when I went to the website and they stated that it sometimes moves files from where they should be...since I am not that familiar with OS X (Panther 10.3.9) I thought it best not to try it.  
(Version 12/14/05)

MACUPDATE ADMIN  I've used ClamXav in Panther and now in Tiger with absolutely no deleterious effects. All files have always been where they are supposed to be.

Users should realize that any good developer adds more caveats to the use of their softwares than are truly necessary. They do it for legal reasons mostly.  
(Version 12/14/05)

MARYW  Thanks hun, I shall try it then. I just didn't have to want to chase my files around but on the other hand I am tired of finding them there one minute and gone the next...have recently lost my entire folder of textures for my Poser items and the cd I have them saved on is also missing.  
(Version 12/14/05)

COMMANDER LAZENBY  I'm positive, Mary, that you meant to reference Norton AntiVirus rather than Disk Doctor. I can fully understand why people refuse to pay for anti-virus solutions on the Mac, given that our only fear is passing them onto our PC friends, and I completely support any open source anti-virus initiatives, but I've been using the latest version of Norton AntiVirus for Mac since it came out and it's never been anything but robust. On the other hand, I honestly have no idea how effective it is since I've never had any problems.  
(Version 12/14/05)

MARYW  Thanks Commander -- yes I meant NAV but am also not a fan of DD either.  
(Version 12/14/05)