Anti-Virus Software from McAfee leaves users stranded

> Last week, McAfee [broke](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/04/broken-mcafee-dat-update-cripples-windows-workstations.ars) a lot of its customers’ computers. A virus definition update caused a false positive identification of a virus within a key Windows file. > > McAfee initially [tried to downplay the issue](http://siblog.mcafee.com/support/mcafee-response-on-current-false-positive-issue/), claiming only “moderate to significant” issues on affected machines, and that the default configuration of its software was harmless. “Not booting properly and being useless for real work” strikes us as somewhat worse than “moderate to significant,” and there are many reports from people saying that McAfee is wrong about the default configuration (the situation seems unclear, but it looks like upgrades and certain patches can result in a different “default”—one that isn’t safe). As if that was any consolation—none of the settings should result in machines getting broken. Ultimately, such quibbling is irrelevant: tens or hundreds of thousands of machines were disabled by the virus update. Another article that makes me glad I’m a Mac user. I suppose you can consider anti-virus software a necessary evil on the PC, but I don’t consider using a PC necessary, so maybe not.

Meanwhile, I continue to believe that having anti-virus software on a Mac actually does more harm than good. You slow down your machine and risk running into one of these false-positive disasters, all in the hopes of blocking viruses that don’t effect your computer, anyway.

I’m not saying that Mac viruses aren’t possible, or that Mac users aren’t dumb enough to fall prey to malware, particularly Trojan Horses. What I’m saying is that when that fateful day comes when a Mac virus makes the rounds through millions of computers all over the globe, McAfee software won’t be ready for it, anyway. And only common sense is going to protect you from a Trojan Horse.