Trojans

I have never had a virus or trojan in all the years I have had my mac.

I don't do e.mail at all anymore.

The only thing I did that day was visit a forum and when I logged out before shutting down, I was notified by my own system that I had several trojans, so I took the necessary steps and all was well.

My question is this. Can we pick up a trojan from a forum?

 

Hi Christine. Of course you can pick up a trojan from a forum site.

You run that risk every time you click on a URL in a members post.

Also clicking on a Signature that contains a live link.

It's up to you to use discretion.

 

DSTM is right but, assuming that you are referring to a forum that you visit regularly and are familiar with, the odds are that you did not get a trojan directly from the forum. If you did any of the things that DSTM mentioned that is a different story. For example if you find a link here on CHF and it is posted by some brand new member with no history of posting I would be very careful. We remove those things as soon as we find them to be dangerous or suspicious but noone is here 24/7.

I don't know what you mean by "your own system" or what steps you took. However, Macs are coming into the real world. People seem to think that the system is far more secure than windows which is not really true. As its share of the market grows more and more "bad guys" are attacking it. Its relative security is simply based on the fact that there were few people attacking it because there were not enough systems to make it worthwhile.

One thing you need to be very careful to do is make certain that there is a status bar at the bottom of your browser window. In IE you will find it under "View" and then "Toolbars." In Firefox it will just be under "View" alone. Once that is done, just running your mouse over the link will display the path in the status bar. If something appears wrong, don't click on it.

 

Thank you both for the replies. I have a good idea where I got the trojans now because I did click on some links that were posted that day.

I am not one to argue about whose computer is better as I have never owned a pc. All my computers are macs and I am quite satisfied.

I added the status bar, thanks for that info, I didn't know that it should show, now I will keep a closer eye on it (and of course those links on forums).

 

You are quite welcome Christine. You can be absolutely certain that no staff member here or any long term member will ever post a malicious link. I post links all the time and we do our best to investigate links from unknown members. We consider any link to a commercial site to be spam unless it is specific to the topic under discussion and even then, if we don't know the person who posted we still are wary and check it out. We remove all spam without exception.

We do all that is necessary and proper to protect our members. That is our primary concern.