. Pros Top scores from AV-Comparatives, good scores from AV-Test. Cleaned most Windows malware in hands-on tests. Cons Protection against malicious and fraudulent URLs requires separate download.
Mediocre score in antiphishing test. Bottom Line Avira Free Antivirus for Mac costs nothing, and it gets good scores from the independent labs, but it's not the best free Mac antivirus we've tested.
Of course, there are paid Antivirus on the App Store, but who wants to spend precious money Besides, this free anti malware solution doesn’t interfere with other Antivirus programs and can SEE ALSO: Best Free Data Recovery Software for Mac. 7) Comodo Antivirus [Best Antivirus for.
Though some Mac enthusiasts might argue the contrary, Macs aren't invulnerable. You need protection on your macOS devices. Sure, Windows and Android are much more popular targets, but Apple machines get hit with malware too, including nasty variants like ransomware. If you don't care to pay for antivirus protection on your Mac, consider Avira Free Antivirus for Mac. It doesn't cost a penny, and it did well in tests by the independent labs. Scheduled scanning is enabled by default, once per week.
You can add more scheduled quick or full scans, on a daily or weekly basis. Clicking Modules in the left-side menu displays the status of four security modules: Real-Time Protection, Protection Cloud, Firewall, and USB Scanner (the last is reserved for the Pro edition of this product). Seeing the label Firewall, you might get the impression that Avira includes a firewall component, like Intego, McAfee, and Norton.
However, this component simply controls the built-in macOS firewall component. Pricing and OS Support. There's a big range of prices for Mac-based antivirus support. At the high end, Intego lists at $99.99 per year to protect three Macs, and asks $89.99 per year for five cross-platform licenses.
Granted, these two are security suites, going beyond what a simple antivirus utility offers. The most common pricing plan among products we've reviewed is $39.99 per year for one license and $59.99 for three. As for Avira, you don't pay a thing.
Like, it's totally free. You do need a modern operating system to use this antivirus. Avira requires macOS El Capitan (10.11) or better. If you're using an old operating system, you may need to consider a different Mac antivirus. Sophos support runs back to Mountain Lion (10.8), Webroot works on Lion (10.7) or better, and goes all the way back to Snow Leopard (10.6).
Good Malware Protection Lab Scores When evaluating Windows antivirus utilities for, I use a wide range of tests that I've developed over the years. I don't have anything similar in hand for the macOS platform, as my many hand-coded testing tools are Windows-only. For Mac antivirus, I necessarily rely more heavily on the independent testing labs to know which products are effective. Fortunately, most of them do just fine. Two of the independent antivirus testing labs I follow include macOS products in their testing, and both have Avira on their test roster. Certifies Avira for malware protection, with the best possible scores. It achieved 100 percent protection against Mac-centric malware (to be fair, most of the products in this test reached 100 percent).
The experts at rate antivirus utilities, both for Windows and macOS, on three criteria: how well they protect against malware, how little they impact performance, and how carefully they avoid flagging valid programs as malicious. With six points available in each category, the maximum score is 18. Avira earned 5.5, 5.0, and 6.0 points in the three criteria respectively, for a total of 16.5 points. Others have done better. Bitdefender, and Trend Micro all earned a perfect 18 from AV-Test, as well as 100 percent from AV-Comparatives. You may notice that there aren't any results in the table for Sophos, ESET, McAfee, and a few others.
These products all earned high marks in past test reports, but the labs vary their product selection, and the latest reports didn't include them. When I challenged Avira to clean up a USB drive containing the samples from my own Windows-centered testing, it finished quickly, eliminating 82 percent of the samples.
That's better than most of the products I've tested in this way, though caught 86 percent and Sophos managed 100 percent. In addition, Sophos jumped right in to scan the USB drive, without waiting for me to request a scan. Protection Against Phishing and Malicious URLs Phishing URLs are frauds that attempt to steal your login credentials by imitating sensitive websites. Phishing is a platform-agnostic crime—you can fall victim to fraud using absolutely any device that has a browser. That includes your Mac. Preventing access to such URLs, or to URLs containing malicious code, can be the first line of defense for an antivirus tool, whether it's Mac.
Avira Free Antivirus does not in itself protect against malicious or fraudulent URLs, but it does give users easy access to Avira's Browser Safety extensions for Chrome and Firefox. I installed the Chrome extension and proceeded to test Avira's browser-based protection. For this test, I gather the newest phishing URLs I can find, especially ones that haven't yet been analyzed and blacklisted. I use one of my hand-coded tools to launch each URL and record results in three browsers, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, each protected by the browser's own built-in protection.
As for the Mac product, my analysis tool works strictly on Windows, so I test by hand on the Mac. I ran this test simultaneously with my test of Avira Antivirus and on Windows. For testing purposes, I discard any URL that causes an error message in any of the browsers, and any URL that doesn't actively attempt to capture login credentials. Analyzing the remaining URLs, the undeniable phishing URLs, I found that Avira's detection rate came at 66 percent, as it did under Windows. That makes sense; the Chrome plug-in that handles phishing protection isn't platform-specific. That 66 percent score is better than the 47 percent Avira earned last time I put it to the test. However, it's in the bottom half for macOS antivirus utilities that include phishing protection.
Recently managed 100 percent protection in this test. On the plus side, Browser Safety marks up unsafe links in search results, so you can avoid clicking them. It doesn't offer the detailed analysis that you get from Norton, but then, most of the time you don't need to see those details. Should You Go Pro? At the bottom of the main screen's left-side menu is a highlighted item titled 'Get Pro.'
Clicking it gets you a laundry list of the virtues of the Pro edition. These include scanning USB devices, protecting emails, and full-scale phone support, along with more nebulous benefits such as 'award-winning shields against dangerous threats' and protection enhancement using 'smart learning algorithms.' As with the free and Pro editions on Windows, perhaps even more so, the added benefits don't seem to merit the price. The free edition's real-time protection scans a file that enters your Mac via USB either when it's copied to the local drive or when it executes. Likewise, when you save or launch a malicious email attachment, real-time protection jumps into the fray. Personal tech support is nice—free users only get FAQs and community support forums—but not $44.99 per year nice. I didn't see a reason to review the Pro edition separately.
Free and Simple Having heard for years that Macs don't get malware, Mac users may find paying money for antivirus protection hard to justify. It's a false assumption—macOS malware exists—but that still doesn't mean that you must pay.
Avira Free Antivirus for Mac does a decent job, and it doesn't cost a dime. But you should also look at Sophos Home (for Mac).
Like Avira, Sophos has certification from two independent labs. It wiped out all our Windows malware samples, beating out even its paid competitors. And in our antiphishing test it does much better than Avira.
Hello everyone, how are you all doing today? I am doing alright, not good, not bad. I say that because for the past couple of days, our server where this web site is hosted on has been giving me issues to the point I almost considered moving from a Linux powered server to a, lol seriouslyI was that fed up! But luckily I didn’t give up and I was able to fix the memory leak and as it stands, things are back to normal.
Anyway, read on Today we will focus on the the best Antivirus protection on Macs. Believe it or not but we have people out there who think iMacs, Macbooks etc are somehow safe from Viruses. I ask you this, HOW? Every system has a way to get cracked, it’s just a philosophical type thing. If you have a door, whether it’s locked or not, it can be broken down, that’s how programming works.
Trust me on this. Table of Contents. Do you need an Antivirus Software on OS X? Yes, yes you do need some sort of antivirus app for your Mac OS X and my reason for saying that is simple.
Viruses exist for every known Operating System.It is true that Apple’s Operating system for Macs is safer and more naturally protected against Viruses but the REAL truth is that Mac systems are not as popular as the Windows OS so those that make viruses don’t see a need to program viruses for Macs when most desktop users in the world still operate on a Windows OS. So my point is, it is better to get a good Antivirus for your Mac computer now because sooner or later, as OS X becomes more user friendly, more and more viruses will appear,kind of like how the world is right now, we have more doctors and scientists creating viruses for profit and population control these days than those trying to save patients, you get my point, protect yourself and your OS.
Install Avast Full Version on OS X Are you really surprised that Avast is number one? You shouldn’t be. I have been a web developer/programmer since I was 7 and I have used just about every operating system out there. Anytime I wanted to install a good antivirus product, I always picked Avast because it has never let me down. No virus has gotten past it’s detection system on my Windows OS, Linux OS and I have had Avast on my OS X for the past 3 years and it’s simply, perfect. This is my personal review as the webmaster so I highly and I mean highly recommend you try this one out. By the way, it’s also free for those of you on a bit of budget.
“If you’re on a Mac running OS X, it will work. You need 128 MB of RAM and 750MB of disk space. Beyond that, you can be running just about any stable version of OS X (even El Capitan), and it will keep you protected.” Avast Antivirus Screenshot. AVG AntiVirus for Mac helps keep your Mac free of viruses and running smoothly.
Through its intuitive interface, this app lets you manage your security settings and run scans at any time to ensure complete protection. With AVG AntiVirus for Mac, you can either complete a full scan of your computer, or you can select a file or files to scan independently. This saves you time and lets you avoid repeating scans of the same items over and over again. There are also several options on the Preferences page that allow you to customize your scanning further, including the option to scan for Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) that you may have unintentionally downloaded. Real-time Protection detects and eliminates new threats in real time, so once you’ve cleaned off your machine, you won’t have to worry about new infections taking hold. This feature can be turned on and off as you see fit. AVG Antivirus Screenshot.
Install Bitdefender Antivirus Full Version For OS X Bitdefender Virus Scanner finds Mac malware as well as Windows viruses with ease. Virus Scanner will detect any infected files that you downloaded or got in your inbox, so your Mac will be safe and you won’t pass anything bad to your friends’ computer. Grant Bitdefender Virus Scanner access to the locations on your computer that you want to scan against malware. Choose ‘Deep System Scan’ or ‘Scan Critical Locations’ to scan.
Features: – Detects both OS X malware and Windows viruses; – Before a scan, it updates to detect the latest malware; – Searches for malware even in archives and inside various types of files such as pdf, pkg, zip, rar, etc.; – Critical locations scan – rapidly scans system areas that are prone to infections. – Award-winning Bitdefender antivirus engines; Also: – Quarantines dangerous files; – Deep system scan for all the locations the user has granted access to; – Drag-and-drop scan of files or folders; – Option to exclude files and folders from scan (i.e. Time Machine backups, etc.) – Easy-to-use interface. Bitdefender Virus Scanner Screenshot.
Install Sophos Antivirus Full Version on OS X Sophos Antivirus offers full Mac protection from viruses, Trojans and worms, stops all threats, even those designed for Windows. Not only is your computer safe—the people running PCs you send files to are safe from threats too. Secure web browsing: Be safer online. Sophos Antivirus scans websites for malicious codes. It also blocks web-based malware before it can infect your Mac, protecting you from Internet threats.
Stops all threats, familiar and unfamiliar: Our antivirus technology stops all threats, even if it’s something new. Thanks to Live Antivirus, you have a direct line to SophosLabs for the latest threat intelligence. Quarantines and removes the threats it finds: You might not want to immediately delete bad files our scans find. You can quarantine questionable files and check them again later, or you can have them immediately removed from your computer. The choice is yours. Business-quality antivirus, backed by SophosLabs: We’ve put the entire force of our business-strength threat expertise behind Sophos Antivirus for Mac. That means you’re using the same product that protects all of our customer organizations, large, small and in-between.
Easy installation and painless maintenance: We keep our antivirus light and easy. Once installed, it’ll work quietly in the background with your choice of scanning on-access, on-demand or on a schedule. And of course, it will alert you when it finds something nasty. Sophos Antivirus Screenshot. Install ClamXav Full Version For Mac ClamXav for Mac scans your computer or selected files and folders for viruses to help keep it running smoothly.
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With clear controls and instructions, this program makes it easy to keep your data safe. Straightforward interface: The main interface is split into three sections: a list of your favorite items to scan on the left, scan results on the top right, and status on the bottom right. Buttons in the app’s main toolbar allow you to quickly perform primary functions. Result options: Once you have your scan results, you have several options for dealing with potential issues. For instance, you can choose to show the path to the file, view it in the finder, quarantine it, or just delete it, depending on what it is and why it was flagged. ClamXav would been placed much higher on this list but they switched from a free product to a paid product after being a free product from birth, I don’t blame them at all though, someone has to pay the bills. ClamXav Screenshots.