A few questions about Mac Sophos antivirus(free home edition)

Eriq wrote:

Thanks for the reply! But when i was talking about the third party software, i ment if that would be the things that you ment when you said windows software that could allow malware to work.

Edit: In case you're wondering why i was asking this, i havent scanned for malware on my imac before and its 2-3 years old so i wanted to do a scan to check for malware so i dont send anything to window users. I have 1 windows computer in the same house as mostly macs so i wanted to make sure it was safe. I have already scanned with ClamXav so i was going to scan with sophos last to check for anything malicious/bad

Edit2: Theres also a question/discussion i have on the regular sophos side /search?q= 1034971 you could help answer the questions i have left it you want.

You also said that the antivirus is best for scanning files before opening them? How about on-demand scanning/custom scan/ hard drive scam? Does it work and detect the same things as the scan before opening thing?

Still looking for these answers^. Also I installed sophos and then went to do a local drives scan. It came up with 2-3 million items and took about 5 hours or so. The scan said that there was nothing found so i assume i am safe right? I uninstalled already because i just wanted to do 1 scan to check.

Windows software: software that runs on the Windows OS.  Unless you've done something special, it will not run on any other OS, including OS X.

Third Party Software: software that isn't written by the vendor who created your OS, and isn't written by you.  Windows software is by definition all third party software.  Third party software includes software written for OS X as well.

On-Demand Scan: performed via the Sophos Anti-Virus App, includes the "Scan Local Drives" and "Custom Scan" options.  It's on demand, because you have to click a button to start the scan.

On-Access Scan: performed in the background by the Intercheck process every time a file is opened for reading or writing.  Any file stored locally on your computer will be scanned as appropriate prior to use if On-Access scanning is enabled.  Note that content downloaded from the internet directly to active memory (ie: a javascript from a web page that goes right to your browser window without being cached to disk first) will NOT be scanned by either on-access or on-demand scans.  As soon as it is cached to disk (which will be after it has run in your browser), it will be scanned.

If nothing was found in an on-demand scan, then you currently don't have anything on your system that Sophos detects as malicious.  You may have undetected malware hiding somewhere, but from your earlier descriptions of your computer and computer use, I highly doubt that you do.

Ok so i shoulding have to worry about having malware on my computer i assume. Thanks for all the help Agile/Andrew!

Forgot to add, If anyone knows about malware or just wants to help me, Im still look for an answer for my questions over here /search?q= 1034971

nobody knows/can help out? Still looking for an answer if possible. 

Hello Barbie,

I have waited for "real users" to reply but no one did, so ...

Now there can't be a definite answer as it depends on the number of files, their type (i.e whether they could contain "malware" in the first place) and whether archives are scanned (this is enabled by default). Together these determine the amount of data to be scanned, the effort required and resources needed (e.g. archives have to be unpacked which need CPU and disk space). Of course the performance of the Mac is also a factor. Thus the time needed can range from, I'd say, less than an hour on a fast and "virgin" machine to many hours, days or even virtually forever.

Christian