Question:
clean your mac ad popped up and now my mac is acting funny?!?!?
Lemon Twirl Girl
2013-02-18 19:49:27 UTC
I was just surfing the web and I clicked on the website of a newspaper and an ad that said "clean your mac" popped up and it started doing something, or at least it looked like it did. It kinda freaked me out so I quit safari. When I re-opened safari I was logged out of all of my accounts(mail,pinterest, youtube etc.) which is strange, because they usually keep me logged in. I am kind of freaked out that my mac has a virus, or is being traced or something.
Dose anybody know anything about this? It kinda has me freaked out! Is there a way to tell if my activity on my computer is being like remotely traced and my data is being collected or something?
Five answers:
SilverTonguedDevil
2013-02-18 21:14:37 UTC
Try any of the free malware apps linked below. If you have no preference, try the iAntivirus. That's the one I use to scan my Macs about once a month. So far, in 15 years of scanning my Macs, exactly zero infections have been found. Your mileage may vary.



There is no virus. There could be a Trojan if you installed it. Not much chance of anything if you didn't. Apple knows about all the malware that is around and the latest updates prevent them. Unless you turn off your automatic weekly updates, you are all set. The idea of using some downloaded malware scanner is "belt and suspenders" approach.



Most of these pop-up ads for "protect my computer" are legitimate, such as MacKeeper. It is beguiling, persistent, and annoying, but it is no virus. Rarely, though, a Trojan will pop-up and try to sell you something fake. It doesn't have the power to add files to the OS System folder. so worries are minimized. Both Linux and OS X are well protected from viruses.



If you "accidentally" clicked that clean thing, and it was a legitimate "cleaner", it probably removed cookies. That's where the login is kept for online mail, pinterest, youtube etc. It would be really unusual if it damaged the preferences file for the OS X "Mail.app".



@Joe:

Are you able to boil this down for the poor girl? Even I don't know these dozens of tools, except to know that most of them are for Linux.
?
2016-12-25 20:22:35 UTC
1
Joe
2013-02-18 20:00:58 UTC
Here are some good tools I use on my computers to monitor them



Nagios

Logcheck

Snort

Rkhunter

Chkrootkit

Snort with base barnyard2 snortsam and oinkmaster



Other good tools

Bastille for Mac

Turn on the firewall (built in)

Tcpwrappers

Port sentry

Postfix (MTA so snort nagios logcheck and aide can email you)

Sophos antivirus

True crypt (encrypt important files)

File vault (built in)



Other tools that are good but I don't use

Munin and munit

Swatch

Logsentry



Tips

Mount /tmp as noexec

Default deny firewall policy

Use strong passwords
2016-08-21 12:06:55 UTC
This is up for discussion and there are actually multiple answers to the question...
tess
2016-09-19 06:16:24 UTC
Loved this question


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