Apple Thoughts: Beware of MAC Defender, It's Not so Legit

"By and large, Mac users have been able to escape the onslaught of malware that their Windows counterparts suffer from. But every once in a while, a piece of nastiness slips into the wild."

MAC Defender says it will scan your system for viruses, however what it actually does is pretend to find them and then get you to pony up your credit card information for a false sense of security by paying for a subscription to their virus scanning program. But it is thwarted fairly easy, since it first requires you to install it and then enter your admin password. Some simple things to do in order to be fairly safe without installing any virus detection programs is to make sure you don't run in admin mode, uncheck the "open safe files after downloading" option in Safari and not be so trusting! You can find out more about this gem at Intego.