The short answer, there are too many Mac viruses to count. There is however a large myth in the Mac community that viruses for Macs don't exist, this is 100% false. The best explanation for this. Checking your Mac for viruses. OS X does a pretty good job of stopping viruses and malware from attacking your computer. But there are steps you can take to further protect yourself. Protect your Mac from malware. MacOS has many features that help protect your Mac and your personal information from malicious software, or malware.One common way malware is distributed is by embedding it in a harmless-looking app. Every time a new Windows virus hits the news (and the PCs), Mac users smugly go about their business and crow about how thereis 'hardly any' viruses for the Mac as opposed to the 'thousands' of. Our award-winning detection technology scans for Mac, PC, and Android-based viruses and spyware. So you can feel better knowing your beloved Mac is protected — and that you're not sharing viruses with any of your other devices or with your PC and Android friends.

In the Spring of 2000, the three words 'I love you' were heard by a lot more Windows users than Mac users. Were Mac users less lucky in love? Not necessarily, but a major virus attack occurred on May 5 of that year -- a virus spread using e-mail, with the alluring subject line, 'I love you.' Yet another PC-based virus.

While Windows users suffered the attack, Mac users watched on the sidelines, probably laughing to themselves and to anyone else who'd listen, thinking they were safe from infection. But are Macs really immune to digital attack, or are other factors at play?

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Since launching its first Mac in January 1984, Apple has built a loyal following around simplicity of design and ease of use. Talk to most people who use a Mac, and they'll swear they're impervious to the attacks Windows users are used to. It just wouldn't happen to them. It couldn't. Could it?

Biological viruses are those unwholesome, parasitic creatures that make us miserable when we catch the flu or a cold. Computer viruses are just a digital version. Surely an operating system like the Mac's could never get a virus, right? I mean, look at the design of the screen. And that beautiful case. So clean. So simple. So pure. So … unviruslike.

And it's completely true that Macs aren't affected by PC viruses. Unfortunately that clean, stylish design does not protect Macs from Mac viruses. That smooth facade offers no more protection to a computer being attacked by a Mac virus than a pretty paint job does to protect a car in a head-on collision. So why don't Macs get infected more often? There must be something else going on.

To get to the bottom of this, let's first take a look at what exactly a virus is, how they work, and how their lifecycles could take advantage of your Mac.

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In the 1980s, authors of the first computer virus, Brain, designed it to destroy only illegal copies of their software. Unfortunately, Brain took on a life of its own and actually started to reproduce itself. Things moved more slowly then, though -- you had to install a new diskette into the computer to get it to reproduce [source: Goodwins].

It didn't take long for more malicious hackers (often called crackers) to see the potential in viruses. Using the Internet to spread, a well-crafted virus can infect millions of computers amazingly quickly and do a lot of damage. The I Love You virus mentioned earlier infected more than 50 million computers and billions of dollars were spent fixing the problems it caused. And that was just one virus.

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A virus does this kind of damage basically by inserting itself into the actual code of a program. Whenever the infected program is run, the virus reproduces and tries to infect other computers. To do this, it needs permission from the operating system as well as plenty of other computers running the same software. Under the right circumstances, a virus can infect any computer.

So if viruses are so clever and can infect anything, why haven't they infected more Macs?

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Are Macs really better than PCs at beating viruses?

No computer system is immune to viruses (at least not yet). After all, viruses are just programs and all computers were designed to run programs. But Macs have had several factors in their favor in the fight to stay healthy?

Some suggest that Macs keep such a stellar reputation due to market share [source: Poremba]. Who'd want to write a virus for 100 computers when you could reach 1 million? The disparity isn't that big between the number of Macs and PCs, but you get the point. Not everyone agrees with the market share theory, though, claiming that Macs really do offer fewer opportunities for malicious code to spread [source: Porten]. The bottom line: Macs are not invulnerable and can get infected.

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Another myth revolves around the UNIX foundation of Mac OSX (Mac operating system ten). Architecturally, UNIX is built with a more robust permission structure that prevents unauthorized execution of software. While Microsoft Windows will try to run a program any way it can, even if a virus is redirecting things, UNIX will stop in its tracks when it detects an unauthorized redirection and limit any damage [source: Perrin]. This is great, but it doesn't make your computer immune. It's similar to how exercising and eating right will help you stay healthier, but if a strong enough flu bug comes around you're still in for some misery. To infect a Mac, the viruses just need to be written well enough to get around the architecture. Not easy, but completely do-able [source: Rooney].

Even Apple devotees are beginning to realize that Macs are not only vulnerable, but increasingly likely to be targeted by crackers. Trying to capitalize on this vague awareness, in 2011, someone released a Trojan called Mac Defender, a fake program that tried to pass itself off as anti-virus software. Once it gets onto your computer, it throws an annoying array of pop-up ads at you until you buy the fake software. It's not likely to fool many people, but it's still annoying and a sign of more to come.

Just because Macs are vulnerable doesn't mean all hope is lost. Let's look at some effective ways to keep your Mac and your data secure.

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Even though Macs aren't as secure as you may have thought, there are plenty of ways you can protect your computer. In this battle, your first line of defense is yourself. Most security lapses can be prevented if you're conscientious about your surfing and what files you allow onto your computer.

For example, most malwares arrive in the form of Trojan horses, which come attached to e-mails or files you download from the Internet. This is a reference to the Greek epic 'The Aenid,' where the Greeks gave the Trojans a large wooden horse as a gift to honor the supposed Trojan victory over the Greeks. Greek soldiers poured out of the horse during the night to let the Greek army into Troy, taking the city by storm. Similarly, Trojan horse malwares are contained within seemingly benign files, like a note from a long-lost friend (who is fake) or a picture of a celebrity. Note that Trojan horse malwares are things you let in through negligence or poor judgment. In other words, be careful about what you click on in an e-mail, or what files you open if you're not sure about the source.

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Look out for risky sites on the Web, too. Ever look at the status bar at the bottom of your browser? It'll usually show you the URL of the Web site you'll go to if you follow the link you're hovering over. If the link domain ends in .cc or .co, be careful. Viruses and other malware often originate from these domains [source: Keizer]. Regardless of the domain, use your common sense and take a look at a Web site's URL before clicking on any search results. Redirects based on popular search terms are a common trick too.

But don't worry, you're not alone in your fight against the bad guys. Legitimate Mac security software is out there. Intego, Kaspersky and Agile all offer highly rated security solutions you can buy to help you keep your Mac as clean and pure inside as it looks outside. Intego's VirusBarrier 6 offers basic protection for about $50, while Kaspersky's introductory software will run you about $60. Both offer comprehensive anti-malware protection, while Intego's version also includes a firewall. Agile is one of the highest rated password management tools available for $40.

If these are too pricey, Sophos and ClamXav are available for free. If you're new to anti-virus software (and most Mac users are) you might want to try a free option to learn more about what's available to you.

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Sources:

• Bott, Ed. 'Why Malware For Macs is On Its Way.' ZDNet. May 5, 2011. (Aug 5, 2011) http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/why-malware-for-macs-is-on-its-way/3243
• Goodwins, Rupert. 'Ten Computer Viruses That Changed the World.' ZDNet UK. Aug 3, 2011. (Aug 4, 2011) http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-threats/2011/08/03/ten-computer-viruses-that-changed-the-world-40093590/
• Jade, Charles. 'Mac Market Share Surges in U.S.' Gigaom: the Apple Blog. Oct 14, 2010. (Aug 5, 2011) http://gigaom.com/apple/mac-market-share-surges-in-u-s/
• Keizer, Gregg. 'Fake Security Software Takes Aim at Mac Users.' Computerworld. May 2, 2011. (Aug 2, 2011) http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216335/Fake_security_software_takes_aim_at_Mac_users
• Kleinbard, David; Richtmeyer, Richard. 'U.S. Catches 'Love' Virus.' CNNMoney. May 5, 2000. (Aug 2, 2011) http://money.cnn.com/2000/05/05/technology/loveyou/
• Liebowitz, Matt. 'Apple, Expecting Attacks on Lion, Moves to Foil the Jackals.' Security News Daily. Feb 28, 2011. (Aug 2, 2011) http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/apple-strengthens-security-as-market-share-grows-0563/
• Perrin, Chad. 'Unix vs. Microsoft Windows: How System Designs Reflect Security Philosophy.' Tech Republic. Oct 20, 2010. (Aug 5, 2011) http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/unix-vs-microsoft-windows-how-system-designs-reflect-security-philosophy/4627
• Poremba, Sue M. 'Five Apple Security Myths -- and the Disturbing Truths.' Security News Daily. Mar 9, 2011. (Aug 3, 2011) http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/five-apple-security-myths-disturbing-truths-0593/
• Porten, Jeff. 'Mac Virus Onslaught in 2011? Not So Fast.' Macworld. Dec 30, 2010. (Aug 11, 2011) http://www.macworld.com/article/156744/2010/12/2011_viruses.html
• Rooney, Ben. 'Time for Mac Users To Think About Viruses.' Wall Street Journal. May 11, 2011. (Aug 5, 2011) http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/05/11/time-for-mac-users-to-think-about-viruses/

You may have heard it's said that Macs don’t get viruses. That there’s no Apple virus. You may even have said it yourself. Sadly, it’s not true. The latest State of Malware Report by Malwarebytes describes a significant rise of Mac threats of over 400% in 2019. The report claims that cybercriminals now target Macs severely, due to increasing market share. So, do you still believe that Macs don’t get viruses? Continue reading to discover how to remove a virus from your Mac and protect your files from getting infected.

Can Macs get viruses?

Macs have been considered safer than Windows PC for a long time. Macs are indeed secure, thanks to various built-in features, such as GateKeeper, that doesn't allow installing anything not approved by Apple. But, as the Apple security features have improved, so is malware. According to the State of Malware report mentioned before, Macs are mostly attacked by adware and potentially unwanted programs (PUP), which macOS has no counteraction against. So, answering the question, yes, Macs do get viruses, and they may impact your sensitive file and data seriously.

How do I know if my Mac has a virus?

Before you remove a virus from a Mac, you need to be sure it actually has one. We’ve covered that in more detail in this article but here are a few pointers.

• Your Mac starts behaving erratically and doing things you don’t expect;
• Your Mac starts running very slowly as if something is hogging the processor;
• You start seeing adverts on your desktop;
• You find software or applications you didn’t install.
• An app asks for your administrator password

These symptoms may mean your Mac has a virus, although there could be other explanations.

How to remove a virus from a Mac manually

Thankfully, there are lots of ways to do it. And Mac virus removal doesn’t have to cost money.

1. Delete browser extensions

One of the most common types of malware comes in the form of browser extensions. Even extensions that aren’t particularly malicious can be annoying, and if you didn’t deliberately install them, they’re malware. Here’s how to get rid of unwanted browser extensions.

Safari

1. Launch Safari.
2. Click Safari in the top menu, then choose Safari Extensions.
3. Look down the list and click on any extensions that look suspicious. Read the description of the extension. If you don’t remember installing it, click Uninstall.
4. Repeat until you’ve removed all the extensions you don’t want.

Chrome

1. Launch Chrome.
2. Click on the 3-dot icon in the upper right corner.
3. Select More Tools and choose Extensions from the menu that appears.
4. Look over the extensions in the browser window and click Remove on any that you don’t recognize.

Firefox

1. Launch Firefox.
2. Click the 3-line (hamburger) icon at the top right corner.
3. Choose Add-ons.
4. Click the Extensions tab and remove any you don’t recognize.

2. Uninstall apps

Malware comes in lots of different forms. And it even comes disguised as security software to help you get rid of viruses! Devious, huh?

If you’ve inadvertently downloaded an app that turns out to be a virus, you need to uninstall it immediately. There are a couple of ways to do this. Here’s the hard way.

1. Go to your Applications folder and drag the app to the Trash.
2. Go to ~/Library folder and look in the Application Support folder for any files related to the app and drag those to the Trash.
3. Look in the other folders in ~/Library, especially Launch Agents and Launch Daemons and remove any files related to the app from there. But be careful, if you remove files used by legitimate apps you could cause lots of problems.
4. Repeat Step 3 for your Mac’s main Library folder.

The easy way: Uninstall apps in a few clicks

1. Download and launch CleanMyMac X.
2. Click Uninstaller.
3. Check the box next to the application name.
4. Click Uninstall.

If you don’t know the name of the application, it’s more difficult. But if you use CleanMyMac X, all you have to do is scroll through the list of applications and look for any you don’t recognize or don’t need and remove them. CleanMyMac X removes every trace of an app, including files that you may overlook when you remove applications manually. This is particularly important for viruses, so it’s much better to use CleanMyMac X.
What makes this method even better, is that CleanMyMac X also shows you app leftovers that remained after the main app is gone.

3. Escape the virus: Create a new user profile

Usually, viruses are attached to a particular user profile on your computer. In this way, they are able to seize control of your admin profile. But you can start if from scratch and create a new user on your Mac. Don't worry, you will be able to transfer all your important data from one user to another.

Go to Apple menu > System Preferences, click Users & Groups.

1. Click the lock icon , then type in your admin password.
2. Use the plus sign to add a new user profile.

To move your important information from one user to another, you will need to access the Shared folder.

1. Click on the Finder > Go to Folder...
2. Paste in this: /Users

Can you see the Shared folder? Here you can copy the needed files from your old user account. Hurray, you've started a clean, virus-free life!

Bonus tip: Clean up your login items

Login items are apps that launch automatically upon startup. Malware programs would often sneak into your login items without you knowing. How to prevent them from launching?

1. Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences.
2. Click Users & Groups.
3. Click on the Login Items tab
   

Any Viruses For Mac Operating System

From here you can manage them using the [+] and [—] buttons.

How to remove a virus from Mac automatically

While the above steps work very well in lots of cases, sometimes the Mac virus removal means using a dedicated application to scan and remove malware from your Mac.

Scan your Mac for viruses

There are lots of these applications available, and many of them are either free or allow you to at the very least scan your Mac for free to find out whether you need to take action. Be careful, however. It’s important to choose a tool from a reputable vendor. If you just google ‘Mac antivirus tool’ some of the results may well be for tools that are themselves malicious and instead of removing viruses from your Mac will infect it. We recommend using CleanMyMac X.

It can identify thousands of malware threats, including adware, spyware, ransomware, worms, cryptocurrency miners. And if CleanMyMac finds something suspicious, it will offer immediate removal. Besides, it ensures real-time Mac virus protection, informing you when you’re about to install something harmful. Here’s how to perform a full system scan:

1. Download CleanMyMac X (free download) and launch the app.
2. Click on the Malware Removal tab.
3. Click Scan.
4. Click Remove.

Disable the invisible agents

Some small supporting applications never show up in the Login items. They are called the Launch agents and may as well be hacked by viruses. You can find them with the universal Mac cleaner, CleanMyMac. This app is notarized by Apple, so you are safe using it.

1. Launch the app and go to the Optimization tab.
2. Click Launch agents

How many apps do you see there? Remove any flash players, automatic updaters, or everything else that you find suspicious. Even if you deleted the main app itself, its launch agents may still occupy your drive. Here is what I have:

How to get rid of a virus on a Macbook Pro (or any other Mac) if all else fails

If you’ve run through all the steps above and are still having problems trying to remove a virus from a Mac, the next step is to restore from a Time Machine backup. The benefit of restoring from Time Machine is that you can do it quickly and easily by booting into the recovery partition and you can choose to backup to a state just before your Mac started behaving erratically.

The downside of this option is that any work you’ve done since the backup you restore from will be lost. You could manually copy files from your Mac to another drive or cloud storage service before you restore and then copy them back afterward. However, if one of those files is infected, you risk contaminating your Mac all over again. If there are documents you really need and that aren’t backed up elsewhere, use one of the antivirus tools above to run a scan on them before you copy them to another disk. That way you’ll know they’re safe.

Here’s how to restore from a Time Machine backup

1. Make sure you’re connected to your Time Machine backup drive.
2. Restart your Mac, holding down the Command and R keys until you see the Apple logo. When the macOS Utilities screen appears, choose Restore from a Time Machine Backup. Click Continue.
3. Choose the last backup before your Mac started misbehaving or you suspect you were infected with a virus.

Your Mac will now return to the state it was in when you made that backup.

If you don’t have a Time Machine backup to restore from, the last resort is to reinstall macOS. This is a ground-zero approach. You’ll need to wipe your startup drive completely clean and start again. That means reinstalling all your applications and copying all your data back to your Mac afterward. If you have a recent backup of your data, from before your Mac became infected, you can use that to copy data from after you re-install. If not, you’ll need to back up important files now — but scan them with an antivirus tool first to make sure they’re not infected.

To perform a clean install of macOS, you’ll need a bootable installer disk. Creating one is beyond the scope of this article, but there is a comprehensive guide here.

Once you’ve made your bootable installer, plug it into your Mac, go to System Preferences, choose Startup Disk and select the disk you just plugged in. Restart your Mac, holding down Command-R and do the following:

1. When the macOS Utilities screen appears, select Reinstall a new copy of macOS. Click Continue and then Continue again when the next window appears.
2. Agree to the terms and conditions and select your Mac’s internal disk.
3. Click Install. Wait for your Mac to restart.
4. Your Mac will start up as if it’s a new Mac and you’ll need to go through the process of setting it up from scratch.
5. Once you’ve set it up, copy back the files you need from the backup and that you know aren’t infected.

As you can see, there are many different ways to remove a virus from a Mac, depending on how badly infected it is and what kind of virus it is. The main thing to remember is if you suspect your Mac is infected, don’t worry. It can be fixed! Move on to our little Q&A section to find answers to questions many users ask.

FAQ

Do you need an antivirus for Mac?

Most of the antiviruses protect your Mac in real-time, making it apparent for you when an intruder appears. So, with antivirus software, you can be sure no PUP or adware can infect your computer. Antivirus is not a must-have software, but it indeed adds up a layer of protection if you use it.

Can you get a virus from opening an email?

Email viruses do exist, but you can’t catch one just by opening an email. What you need to be cautious with are email attachments. If you don’t know who that email comes from, avoid opening the attachment. It can contain PUP and other things you don’t need on your computer.

How to do a virus scan on Mac?

To do a quick virus scan, inspect your Mac for the software you didn’t intentionally install. Some apps can come in bundles hiding malicious programs that end up appearing on your Mac. For a more thorough virus scan, get CleanMyMac X. All you need to do, is to install the app, go to Malware Removal, and hit the Scan button.

Are There Any Viruses For Mac

How to remove fake “Update Adobe Flash Player” pop-ups on Mac?

Try to find and delete the last app you installed before you started seeing such fake alerts. Also, remove browser extensions from the web-browser where you see such pop-up ads. Some malicious extensions can be responsible for this. If nothing helps, scan your Mac for viruses using the antivirus of your choice.

Are There Any Viruses For Mac

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