Macintosh Spyware

There is no free Mac spyware removal programs that are legitimate. This is because the spyware that is written is for the PC and Windows in particular. Macintosh has never suffered the attacks on their system that there have been on the Windows operating system. Therefore there are companies that promote products to unsuspecting Macintosh customers to remove spyware that does not exist.

The introduction of Mac OS X 10.4 introduced a new feature that shows that perhaps there are spyware coming into the Macintosh world. The new feature that is included is one that checks all downloads and files for malicious software is known by names such as malware, trojan, spyware, worm, and virus, some of which may be self replicating. There may be small amounts of these programs beginning to affect the Mac.

There has never been the flood of spyware or viruses on the Mac and has been seen on the PC. For a long time it was something that people pointed to to prove that Mac was better than PC. The reality is that when someone want to cause damage they want it as wide spread as possible. There are for better or worse more PC’s out there than Mac’s. The second reason for there being more attacks on PC’s than Mac’s was culturally it was more popular to attack Windows than to attack Macintosh.

Spyware removal software is something that has not been needed on Mac’s to date. Though there are several companies that do offer free spyware removal software for the Mac. Those that understand that Mac’s don’t get hit with viruses and spyware like the PC does don’t buy or get free spyware removal software for the Mac. The only ones that do are the ones that don’t know that Mac’s are not affected by the viruses and spyware that is out there.

The reason that Mac’s may becoming more open to the attacks today than in the past, may be because Apple's Video's about spyware & virus's called Trust Mac & Viruses

Also check out apple's website for this view on spyware & virus on a mac.
114,000 viruses? Not on a Mac.

Site back and enjoy the internet and your computer as Windows users rush out to buy the latest spyware, firewall and anti virus software, ALL not needed on the Macintosh.

These is one site out there that does offer a way to scan you mac for spyware, keystroke loggers, Trojans it Macscan provided by securemac

Here is an older post but still very relevant from Sunbelt the makes of CounterSpy
Spyware in Mac Land?

Also a search on apple http://search.info.apple.com/?search=Go&lr=lang_en&kword=&type=&newstype=&q=spyware
shows three results.

This is the only relevant result Mac OS X 10.4 automatically checks downloads for unsafe content