Re: help me understand how a Mac is virtually immune to viruses?

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 16:13:55 GMT, Joe Bergeron
<jabergeron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Now you do. I am a user of multple single-user single account Macs.
>When you set up a new Mac, you set up a default admin account.
>Otherwise, every user would be required to have two accounts on his Mac
>just so he'd have one that would allow him to install software. Some
>people advise this very strategy, but I haven't seen the need.

Interesting. When I set up OS X, that wasn't the case. And outside my
own network, my only experience with OS X is on company networks, where
the users are most certainly not set up with admin rights.

Kind of an interesting change here: MS (and those involved with MS
software) are finally making some headway towards getting the average
user to operate without admin privileges, and Apple is going the other
way. That effort to "simplify" things could bite back; it is well known
that the more privileges a user has in his normal operating environment,
the more vulnerable he is. An OS X user with admin privileges enabled,
for example, is as vulnerable to typical email worms and trojans as a
Windows user (that is, worms targeting Macs; obviously not the bulk of
worms out there now that target Windows).

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
.

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