Ha! I purchased Avira for my Mac, and I’ve configured it to automatically download signature updates and run antivirus scans.Īny operating system can get malware. (Does having a Mac and an Android phone make me a weirdo?) Install antivirus on your iPhone too! Even my Android phone has Lookout as its antivirus. Because malware sucks, and the internet is loaded with it.Ī dose of prevention is worth an ounce of cure Now that being said, let’s get into malware removal. The best way to remove malware is to prevent getting it in the first place. Make sure that, regardless of which operating system your PC or phone uses, that you have some sort of antivirus software running. Windows 10 runs Windows Defender if you don’t install an alternative. macOS, Linux distros, Android and iOS mobile devices (iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad) do not come with antivirus software out of the box. I have worked for antivirus companies over the years Comodo, Sophos, BlackBerry Cylance, and Kaspersky. Those days are gone and now I’m professionally platform-agnostic when it comes to AV. If you aren’t sure which antivirus brand you should choose for your device, I highly recommend looking at what says. Their antivirus ratings per operating system change month per month, because ultimately antivirus software is only as good as its most recent update. Do note that for home users, AV-TEST only evaluates antivirus for Android, macOS, and Windows. Make sure your antivirus software is configured to install updates whenever they’re available, and perform automatic scans of your main disk partitions once per week. Think of updates as vaccines for new strains of malware. No antivirus solution is perfect, nor will it make your device completely immune to malware. AV is a safety guard, like getting vaccinated or wearing a seatbelt in your car. The best antivirus client is one that has all of its most recent updates.Īs far as consumer endpoint PC and phone use is concerned, I will mention some of the most frequent vectors of malware infection. They are P2P media downloads and BitTorrent search engines, malware-infected webpages, email attachments, and mobile apps downloaded from outside of the App Store or the Google Play Store. With that in mind, be super careful with P2P file downloading and using torrent search engines. Actually, it’s best to be avoided! Be very careful to not click on webpage links in emails or open email attachments from email addresses you aren’t familiar with. And only install mobile apps from the App Store or Google Play Store if you can. Malware has been found in the App Store and the Play Store, but Apple and Google work very hard to detect and eliminate it. Therefore, their Stores are the safest source of mobile apps by far. Malware does a lot more damage when it's in an account with administrative (root) privileges. Linux based and UNIX based systems (that includes macOS) will typically use root only when it's absolutely needed. As far as Windows is concerned, do your everyday work and play in an account with limited privileges. Only log into your administrative account when you need to install software, change your Control Panel settings, or modify other user accounts. Whichever account you’re using in Windows, be very careful when you allow UAC (user account control) to perform actions. On Android phones, look carefully each and every time an app asks for permissions.
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