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Macprotector Scam & Trojan

Hey folks, there's a nasty Mac specific trojan running through the wild. It looks to be mostly transmitted by social engineering means. Particularly, with alarming "virus alert" messages from an infected website demanding you install MacProtector, MacSecurity, or MacDefendor.

If you have this beast, I recommend following the instructions posted in Apple's forum.

There are a few discussions about this going on over the web right now. I came across this via Ed Bott's pieces today over at ZDNet (#1 & #2). Bott's replies to John Gruber's "Wolf" post @ Daring Fireball has birthed some interesting discussion, including a clever rip by Walt Mosspuppet. In the end, it seems to be more of the old Mac vs. PC bickering that's been going on for decades.

My concern, at this point, is that there are those who think that the Mac OS "superiority" towards virus and hack exploits makes them immune from concern. There ARE Mac viri out there. As a long-time Mac user who's passionate about the platform, I think this attitude is not only bad but dangerous. We should remind people that they should be aware of the latest exploits out there and how to protect themselves. We can't let ourselves get blinded by arrogance.

So, folks, don't click on strange links, exercise caution surfing porn (if you must surf it at all), don't trust alarmist pop-ups, and don't give out your credit card number to a site that you don't trust implicitly. To paraphrase a quip by Graham Hibbert (via Twitter), we need to make sure that, when the wolf comes, we are ready.

Now, go and practice safe computing!

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