Norton Antivirus/ firewall etc

Hi guys
I have reaqd many times on this forum of advice never to have norton, or anything else similar, ever connected. So, I haven't. However, as I also use the same computers to use internet etc does that leave me at risk?
Is there a safe way of using an antivirus/ firewall and not screwing up FCP?
If anyone has any experience I would be grateful
Thanks

If you are running OSX there is a built in firewall on your Mac - check out System Preferences > Firewall.

At this stage there are no known viruses for Mac OSX. For Mac OS9 and earlier I think there were around 36 viruses in total, if you didn't include the Microsoft Word Macro viruses. Last time I looked there were more than 10,000 viruses for Windows.

This is not to say that there won't be a virus. Almost certainly there will be. So far there have been a few security holes found, but all have been plugged as they were found.

I have personally been running and troubleshooting Macs since the mid 1980's and in that time I have only seen one mac virus in the wild - a system 6 number which got into a system 7 machine via floppy disk. It couldn't execute, but it was there. I should have kept it!

So here is my advice - backup your important data when you make a signifigant change that you would hate to lose. Then no matter what happens, you'll be ok.

And don't use IE, or Outlook (aka Lookout!)

Others will probably have lots of different ideas about this

By default the firewall leaves several vulnerable ports open that should be closed. Read up on how to do that or use brickhouse or the equivalent to let you poke at it.

If you're a .Mac subscriber - use Macafee for anti virus chores. You can still spread a viri back to PC land email friends - so caution.

The biggest security holes are always in your social practices. Your dog's name as a password is a terrible idea.

Ian

Thankyou that's really helpful
Chandos

Norton and Video Capture tend not to get along because Norton thinks incoming video signals need to be carefully inspected so as to be clearly safe.

This usually reduces video captures to garbage.

But it's really safe garbage.

Koz