very nice of you to help the computer challenged folks on here lol. happy thanks giving too!


i actually have the hard drive my macbook pro partitioned down the middle-half the MAC OS, and half is windows XP.

i have AVG antivirus on the windows side. it's free and works great. i hardly use the windows side anyway.



the MAC OS side of my hard drive has no antivirus program. there aren't many viruses floating round for make, and the ones that do exist are very severe. that's the reason there are hardly any antivirus programs available for MACs .

i don't keep any important info on my MAC anyway. (bank account info, etc..)

From strictly a security standpoint, I recommend no financial data on any machine that touches the Internet. The banks will al tell us that it's safe, 128 bit blah blah blah. First, the Internet is a CB radio. Second, just because a machine is running OK are you REALLY sure there is nothing on there that can track you? IE spyware thats hides rather than gets in your face (this alone is a 2 hr lecture I give 8 times a year to groups ranging from 50 to 200 people). How bout cookies...can anyone define a "tracking" cookie and what kind of info it can contain? The only reason the banks want you to bank online is because then they don't have to pay 500 FTE salaries for people to answer the phone and tell you your balance. There are some VERY talented programmers out there in bad guy land. Again, Mac, Intel...online banking is very close to CB radio.

One of the first UNIX commands I learned 20 years ago is called "snoop". You know how you type in your password and it shows up in asterisks? Gives that warm fuzzy feeling that it's all encrypted? Hackers constantly scan networks for types of, or destinations of traffic. Using Solaris Unix with no mods, I can use "snoop" on your Internet IP and everything you type in ****'s shows the actual characters you are typing RIGHT ON MY SCREEN! And this is without even having to infect you!

What I just described is absolutely hacker pre-school. The Internet is a CB!!!!! Unless you have things like VPN (which we won't address here.) There are probably 20 security reasons I could justify in 10 mins NOT to do ANYTHING that could compromise your finances, on the Internet.

When I was 10, my mother opened a $25 dollar savings acct for me that paid 4.5 %. NOW they want to charge me 4.5% if my balance drops below 10K$!!!!!! I will pick up the phone and hit * or # and 0 until I get a bank representative on the phone that will tell me what I need to know. The first time my bank tells me "we can't do that on the phone, you have to check that on the Internet", I will tell them "I'm sorry, I need a new bank".

Sorry for ranting, just that I have a true passion for Internet security, and I've seen people really hurt from cyber criminals. This is the banner I carry...to share information about computer safety that peole can benefit from. What they choose to do with it...

All, Have a very wonderful Thanksgiving! More on all this when I get back!!!!!!!!