Security and virus protection for your Mac starts with you

Your Mac is only as happy as how you treat it. So if it gets infected with a virus or you find some malware on it, it's probably you that caused it.

Transcript

I keep hearing from clients:

My computer is broken.
I thought it was always supposed to work.
I thought Macs didn't get viruses.
I thought computers nowadays they're so... been around for such a long time, they should always work.

Let's go back to the virus thing. Macs, do get viruses. Macs do get malware and so on.

How often it happen is actually up to you. It's not up to the computer it's not up to the Mac.

On PCs. You do get viruses without you having to do anything, on Macs generally, you don't. Actually not generally you don't because of the way its sandboxed, the way it's built.

I've done this for 28 years, right? You know that number 28 plus years. I love saying it because it's such a long time. I've been doing this for a long time and the last time I ever had a virus was about 20 years ago.

And in the whole period of me using a Mac, I think in my whole lifetime, and that's the first eight years of doing what I do, I think I've had two, two, no more than two, and they weren't really malicious they were just viruses in the early days.

So yes, Macs do get viruses. How diligent you are in looking after your Mac, is whether you will get another virus, if that makes any sense. And what I mean by that. If a virus has been sent to you, if there's a phishing scam, I'm assuming that, you know, these terms. So phishing, malware, and viruses.

If you get a... if you go to a website, and it looks like a Microsoft website, or it looks like an Apple website or Spotify website or whatever, and you're not paying attention to the URL. The actual address of that website, even though it might look like a Spotify type website, or email that happens quite a lot via email.

They're basically saying click here, log into your account because there's a problem with your account. Now that's fishing. Now that's nothing to do with your computer. That's you not paying attention.

Putting your details in, and then your account getting taken away. Now I wouldn't call it your account being hacked.

There's this thing, everything is a hack. So you're hacked, NO! It's you giving your password away for someone else to use. That's not a hack. That's just you not looking after your own key.

If someone on the street came up to you and said, can I have the key to your car? Where are you going to do? No, go away. Who are you? I'm a policemen. Well you don't look like a policemam.

Because you know that they, you know, they're not wearing a policeman's uniform. On a website. If you're not looking at the URL, it's effectively the same as a uniform. It's the URL isn't correct. You're giving your key, your password and everything to someone else.

So computers and technology generally, don't go wrong. It's the humans using it that causes the problem, but they do go wrong. Your Mac can run slow. There are different issues here. You know, your Mac can one slow, your phone can run slow. Your iPad could actually run slow, but your Mac running slow.

There's so many different parts of it and it's actually pretty simple to fix but you need to look at it to figure out what it actually is, what the problem actually is.

But going back to the virus thing, you've just got to be aware of what you're doing to your computer, what you're doing to your Mac, what you're doing to your devices.

Because generally... in fact, I leave you this leave you with this.

When I was in school a long time ago, my computer teacher at the time, she said to me...

Computers don't go wrong.
What makes them go wrong as the human using it

And that stuck with me and I still think about that all the time.

It's not the computer that goes wrong. It's the human that built it, that programmed it, that uses it. It's the human error that causes the things to go wrong.

So if it's built wrongly, it's built by a human. If it's used wrongly well, It's the human using it so on and so forth. And that's always stuck with me.

So bear that in mind. When you decide to get angry with your computer, don't hit it. Please don't hit it. Just call me, call the MacJunky.

Anyway, I'll leave it there. I guess I'll see you tomorrow as always...

Keep IT Simple.

I lost my train of thought.

Have a great day.

Bye bye.