Question about Spyware and disk maintinance.

[AirBornX]

I've heard mac's dont get spyware and such, is this true?

I also heard that mac's will run a disk cleaner around 3AM... but my powerbook is never on at those times, am I just sorry outta luck?

 

[Aurelius]

I've heard mac's dont get spyware and such, is this true?

I also heard that mac's will run a disk cleaner around 3AM... but my powerbook is never on at those times, am I just sorry outta luck?

Though I've heard rumours, spyware is virtually non-existent on Macs. It's not just because Macs have a smaller marketshare, either. They don't have ActiveX (which, even after Windows XP SP2, is one big spyware hole) and they always ask you for your admin password before an automated install takes place.

It's true that there's a disk maintenance routine that kicks in at the wee hours of the morning. There is a way to force it, though. I wouldn't know the specifics, but it involves using Terminal or a third-party app to force a "cron" job (it's a Unix term) to run immediately.

As it stands, any file under 20 MB is automatically defragmented when launched in OS X, so you don't necessarily need to run those cron jobs all the time.

 

[Idler]

As for maintenance, as of 10.4 it will occour the next time the machine is turned on if it misses a scheduled task... But if you want to force them these are the commands:

sudo /etc/daily
sudo /etc/weekly
sudo /etc/monthly

-Idler

 

[Jeriko_Cherry]

so do macs need to be scanned for spyware (i.e. tracking cookies and such)?

 

[Kaos]

if you use the terminal to run them

just use

sudo periodic daily
sudo periodic weekly
sudo periodic monthly

from what i remember it runs some other things as well

to run optimizations on your own it was something along the lines of

sudo update prebinding -root /

 

[Black Morty Rackham]

so do macs need to be scanned for spyware (i.e. tracking cookies and such)?

Tracking cookies do exist on the Mac, but you can always set the browser to only accept cookies from the actual site you visit and stuff like that. No big deal. Real spyware does not exist.