Scareware scammers target Mac users

Scareware scammers are trying to hoodwink Mac users into buying ineffective security software. MacSweeper is the first rogue cleaning tool for Macs, net security firm F-Secure reports. MacSweeper claims to clean evidence of surfing for porn and other potentially embarrassing material from Macs. The tool turns up items to be …

[Neil Woolford]

Typical of capitalist corporations to ignore Linux!

First the indignity of not being able to use BBC iPlayer or whatever it is on our Linux boxes and now the insult of not receiving properly crafted scareware ads.

I look forward to earnest forum postings, aimed at complete newbies, about simply needing to "Open a terminal, use vim to edit /etc/apt/sources to include www.dodgy.malware.cn and then just apt-get update and apt-get upgrade....."

[An ominous cow herd]

"In a way the creation of the malware is a complement, of sorts, to the Mac"

And may I complement the author on that assumption....

[Anonymous Coward]

No way

Its a complete lie. Macs are super special awesome and never have problems ever.

[Paul George]

@No Way

Get back under the bridge! :-)

A mac user since the 512K

[Anonymous Coward]

Social Engineering

Quote: ""[This] doesn't mean that Mac is becoming less secure in and of itself. But it does mean that Mac users will have to watch out for social engineering tricks just like Windows users have had to do for years," F-secure reports."

Um, Mac users have had to do and should have been doing that anyway, so what is new about this? Nothing.

[Morely Dotes]

Re: Social Engineering

"[This] doesn't mean that Mac is becoming less secure in and of itself. But it does mean that Mac users will have to watch out for social engineering tricks just like Windows users have had to do for years," F-secure reports."

But they've been doing that. That's how they decided to get a Mac in the first place - they resisted the social engineering tricks foisted on the sheeple by Microsoft.

(I'm a Linux fanboi, persoanlly, but Macs are at least not Windows. The enemy of my enemy is ... Well, a less threatening enemy.)

[Aubry Thonon]

"In a way the creation of the malware is a complement, of sorts, to the Mac"

I didn't realise that Macs needed malware to be considered complete...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Really?

One of the first things I did when I got my MacBook was scope out the types of security available for Macs. I figured sooner or later since Vista is such a piece of shite more people were going to go "to the Dark Side" (well, as M$ sees it), and malware attacks were going to rise...some of us aren't idiots.

Looks like the free ride is over.

[penno]

this could be interesting

i wonder how gullible the mac fanbois will be towards this stuff. If they have a tendency to believe their macbooks are impervious, they might tend to believe the crap popping up on their screens. I wonder...

[ian]

not a compliment

I think a dictionary may be "a complement, of sorts", to the author