[Jason]

Hi there,

I have a friend who is thinking of getting Intego Internet Security Barrier - Professional Edition for his G5 desktop.
He has asked me if it is really a worthwhile purchase or if the mac is quite safe without. I can't advise him as I don't have it.
All responses welcome.

Regards

[Ryan]

No, its worthless on a Mac. Just tell him to turn on the built-in firewall under the Sharing pane in System Preferences. Or, for more control, download Brickhouse. Its a different front-end for ipfw, which is what the Apple firewall is.

[Barto]

The Apple firewall is great. Brickhouse gives you more control over the inbuilt firewall (as CubeDude says). Little Snitch is a great outgoing firewall, to be used in addition to an incoming firewall like the one that comes with Mac OS X.

Intego are a group of scammers and con artists who should not be trusted.

[Quagmire]

Would you want a company protecting your computer that made the first trojan for OS X and possibly both trojans for OS X just get there product to sell. I will rather have my computer blown up than have it protected by con artists.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Undertaker I will rather have my computer blown up than have it protected by con artists.

Ding ding ding ding ding!! We have a winner!

Intego = the scum of the developer community. By supporting Intego, you are selling out the integrity of Mac OS X and buying into a company that creates problems so it can act like a hero.

[Eugene]

Somebody should tell the Apple Store then... They sell Intego products.

Not that I trust Intego or anything, but I just remember the rabid accusatory statements in here with regard to Opener/renepo. That trojan (which it is despite Apple's claims) was linked to them despite a complete lack of evidence.

In addition, Macs can still spread viruses as carriers, which a firewall won't necessarily stop. I'm not going to suggest Intego, but anti-virus software would ease the pain of many PC using friends of novice Mac users.

Brad, I noticed you hold Symantec in similar regard.

I'd be interested in what your thoughts are on pharmaceutical companies like Bayer, Pfizer, Merck, GSK, etc. Their lifeblood is providing drugs to combat various pathogens, not to rid us of them after-all...

[Quagmire]

If he really wants anti- virus software on the G5 tell him to get .Mac. You get virex, email, and backup your computer. If I missed anything, let me know.

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by Undertaker If he really wants anti- virus software on the G5 tell him to get .Mac. You get virex, email, and backup your computer. If I missed anything, let me know.

Virex is painful to use...

[torifile]

Originally Posted by Brad Ding ding ding ding ding!! We have a winner! Intego = the scum of the developer community. By supporting Intego, you are selling out the integrity of Mac OS X and buying into a company that creates problems so it can act like a hero.

Brad, have you ever been told you're a drama queen?

[DMBand0026]

I agree with Brad, never ever ever buy anything from Intego and discourage family, friends, loved ones, co-workers, higher-ups, and that guy in the car next to you on the expressway from buying from Intego.

One of the most unethical companies ever.

On that note, you don't need virus protection. If you're smart about things, and even if you're not, it's pretty much impossible to get a virus for your Mac. And when I say pretty much impossible, I mean it's impossible.

Did I mention that you shouldn't buy anything from Intego? Okay, just making sure

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Eugene Not that I trust Intego or anything, but I just remember the rabid accusatory statements in here with regard to Opener/renepo. That trojan (which it is despite Apple's claims) was linked to them despite a complete lack of evidence.

Assuming Intego really didn't have anything to do with Opener, should we forget about MP3Concept and Intego hyping it to be something more than it was?

Google cache of Daring Fireball

OT: Does anyone know why DF has been down lately?

[Brad]

Originally Posted by torifile Brad, have you ever been told you're a drama queen?

I suppose I might give that impression sometimes.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Eugene In addition, Macs can still spread viruses as carriers, which a firewall won't necessarily stop. I'm not going to suggest Intego, but anti-virus software would ease the pain of many PC using friends of novice Mac users. Brad, I noticed you hold Symantec in similar regard.

I hold companies to their practices. If I see one is misbehaving, I usually stay away from it and don't support them. Otherwise, I'd be enabling them and indirectly encouraging that bad behavior.

I've criticized Symantec because it's Norton Utilities (and if I recall correctly also Antivirus) software has caused problems with Mac OS X. I had first-hand bad experience with Norton on OSX back with 10.0 or 10.1 and was forced to reformat because it mangled one of my drives. Reading reviews on sites like MacUpdate leads me to believe I'm not alone in having problems with Symantec.

I don't dislike companies that make anti-virus software for the Mac. I used to spread the love of Disinfectant way back years ago and more recently I hold Virex with pretty high regard (their reputation slightly tainted, though, for using fink libraries without credit or notice).

I think it's great for Mac users to be the good neighbor on PC networks. I just don't like using software from companies with bad reputations to achieve this end.

[Eugene]

In other words, Intego is guilty of poorly wording their press release and being slightly alarmist. Nevertheless, in the rare instance a user did come across one of those files, it's less likely to be noticed than an application that is simply renamed "blah.mp3" with a custom icon.

The # of occurences of the trojan makes no difference to me.

If you're going to only use software only from companies that don't lie^H^H^Hfluff their press releases, that's going to be a very short list to work with. At least Intego has an excuse; they're French.

[Eugene]

On that note, you don't need virus protection. If you're smart about things, and even if you're not, it's pretty much impossible to get a virus for your Mac. And when I say pretty much impossible, I mean it's impossible.

The problem with this logic is that it's woefully inaccurate. Remote exploits are all too common in the unix world. And it's not like SecurityFocus and other certs are always the first to know. A firewall will help here, but that's not really going to help you when it happens to cupsd, ntpd, lookupd, openssl, etc. Apple has occasionally lagged on getting us patched as well.

It's far from impossible and sometimes I wish a real nasty virus would bring us back down to earth.

[ast3r3x]

OT: Does anyone know why DF has been down lately?[/quote]

Simple. It hasn't I've been able to access it for the past couple days, I check about every day once.