Macs to have a more secure holiday season as AVG releases Apple freebie

If anyone still believes that Apple Macs can’t get viruses or malware, it’s time they pulled their head from out of the sand and listen up, because the web is a dangerous place, and it can hurt Macs too. Fortunately, there’s a free solution.

One of the first companies to release free security software for Windows is now turning to Macs with a similar solution for this platform, as AVG’s AntiVirus is delivered for Mac.

The software does what you’d expect a security piece of software to do, searching a computer for spyware and viruses in real-time, removing them when detected and making the experience of using that computer a little safer than without.

“It’s a popular belief that Mac computers are invincible, but they never were,” said Michael McKinnon, Security Advisor at AVG in Australia, adding that “it’s just been a matter of OS X not reaching the popularity that Windows historically had.”

“Thanks to the advent of iPhones and the iPad, the Mac platform has scaled exponentially, and that fact alone makes it a viable target for attackers.”

That surge in popularity means there are potentially more forms of spyware, malware, and viruses being created for the Mac operating system, beyond the few that were in existence before that surge. With that in mind, security software is a necessity for Mac OS, as it has been for Windows before it.

While there are paid solutions out there, AVG’s solution at least offers something for free, bringing automatic updates, real-time scanning through the “Resident Shield” technology, and a scanner that checks for three types of malware, with Windows, Mac, and Android forms checked.

With a price tag of free, it’s a piece of software that Mac users not already running security software should check out, as it’s no longer safe to just assume you won’t get affected by security problems. Basically, if your computer is connected to the web, you need some form of security software.

AVG’s AntiVirus for Mac is available from the AVG website from this week.