Posted on 03/29/2011 4:00:12 PM PDT by FourtySeven
They aren’t telling you what security to run, they’re telling you your security isn’t their job and they won’t eat the costs if there is malware on your computer that hacks your WF account.
EXCEPT AS SPECIFICALLY PROVIDED IN THIS AGREEMENT OR WHERE THE LAW REQUIRES A DIFFERENT STANDARD, YOU AGREE THAT WELLS FARGO IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOSS, PROPERTY DAMAGE OR BODILY INJURY, WHETHER CAUSED BY ACCESS TO OR USE OF THE SERVICES OR THE SITE. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMISSIBLE UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, WELLS FARGO WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY CLAIMING THROUGH YOU FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL, ECONOMIC OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE INSTALLATION OR USE OF THE SERVICES, THE SITE, ANY ON-LINE SERVICES OR INTERNET BROWSER SOFTWARE, INCLUDING LIABILITY ASSOCIATED WITH ANY COMPUTER VIRUSES WHICH MAY INFECT YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM.
Honestly, I don't see anything in this paragraph that would make you HAVE to install software as a term of service.
Which would you rather attack? A house with armed guards at every door and alarms at every access point, or a wide open house... given that each target has just as many valuables inside? Yes, there may be more PCs out there than Macs, but the PC users have all gotten used to being run, armored with AV and other protections. Almost 99% of Macs are run bare-NAKED with no AV... and have been doing so for more than 10 years.
Malware writers have written viruses for the 12,000 PCs that were vulnerable to an unpatched BlackIce problem... and the Witty Worm virus infected all 12,000 computers with the problem within a half hour of it being released into the wild. They've written viruses for less than 30,000 cellular phones in the wild. They've written viruses that attacked the dozens of iPods that were converted to run Linux and released it into the wild. Just how many Macs is the magic number necessary for the malware authors to pay attention to the Mac and write a successful virus for that platform, exDemMom? 10 million? 20? 30?
How many Macs is it going to take before the Malware writers are going to find it worth their while to go after them? There are over 60 MILLION OSX Macs out there and adding over 16-18 million a year. There is no "security by obscurity!"
The latest reports state that a mere 2000 personal computers hijacked into a spambot, available for a short two week window period of availability before the AV companies gird up against them, is worth $50,000 on the black market.
Those bare naked, sitting duck Macs out there are worth a potential 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS every two weeks, if an enterprising malware writer could figure out how to exploit them—and would be available for FAR LONGER than PCs because Mac users would take a long time to get up to speed on using AV than would PC users. It has not happened... not in ten years. There has not been even ONE Mac spam bot... not one. Why not?
The fact is that OSX, built atop the industrial strength underpinnings of BSDFree UNIX, and now one of the four trademarked UNIX™ operating systems, IS that much harder to write a self-installing, self-transmitting, self-replicating worm or virus for. It has undergone over 45 years of trial-by-fire in open source development. There is a big problem of finding a viable vector for the malware author to get his malware onto the platform other than social engineering of Trojans... and OSX will WARN the user about the known Trojans if he or she attempts to download, install, or run one of those known Trojans.
There is no evidence that Mac is intrinsically virus-proof; furthermore, you can Google evidence that it is susceptible.
The reason for its apparent immunity to viruses is in the market. Macs represent a small fraction of users; yearly sales figures don’t mean much until they are broken down. Who is buying the machines? Are they replacements, new users, or people switching from PC? What is their intended purpose (home or business)?
Right now, the majority of Macs are being used at home. Those home-use machines simply do not have the same value as business-use machines, and businesses use PCs.
Spreading of a virus is also far more efficient on a PC than on a Mac. When the majority of machines are PCs, and most of the machines Macs connect to online are PCs, there’s a large barrier to virus transmissibility. It’s much like protection against a biological virus: studies show that 80-90% vaccination rate of the population (I don’t remember the exact rate) is sufficient to protect the non-vaccinated 10-20% of the population against disease. Here, the PCs act like the immunized portion of the population: they will not spread viruses to the Macs. How often do Macs connect directly to each other? How can a hacker hijack and network Macs together, when most network servers are PCs?
Your analogy of a heavily guarded house versus a house with no locks installed is flawed. In this case, the house without locks has very few valuables. The house with all the valuables does have the high security, but chances are, it is exactly the same high security as most of the other houses with valuables. IOW, only one security system has to be neutralized for the hackers to gain access to a huge number of “houses.”
If the number of Mac users were to increase, and businesses were to start using Mac in large numbers, the picture would change. I think that article I linked estimated the magic number as 16%: once Mac gains that market share (by numbers of users, not sales figures), expect it to be targeted. Although—I’m not certain Mac will ever gain that. It’s always had a small market share.
I don’t do business with Wells Fargo....
I won't ever do business with them knowingly again....
Personally, I have yet to be able to force myself to have a lot of sympathy for people who get “hacked” and or infected with such personal information-stealing malware if they have not taken at least rudimentary steps to prevent it. Anyone clueless enough to not “know” that there is a danger - especially if running Windows - probably isn’t bright enough to be trusted to use the internet for anything information-sensitive anyway.
I don’t have a problem with Wells having a policy that they are not responsible if you don’t take such steps... if there is a risk.
But at this time, there is still absolutely ZERO risk to a Macintosh user with up-to-date software (or even out-of-date for that matter). The “less than a handful” of malware that supposedly can “infect” a mac - none steal such info or hack accounts, and so far have not even been shown to self-replicate.
But to be quite honest - it doesn’t matter what platform computer you use (nor will antivirus software help) when you respond to a phishing scam email or link... those don’t use a virus or worm to get your info - you voluntarily give it, thinking you are doing something legitimate.
If a Mac user finds that an online account has been “hacked” - there are really only two possibilities: Either the business’s web site was hacked, or you gave out your info voluntarily (see the previous paragraph). For Wells to suggest that you need to scan your computer - they are idiots. Even a Windows users is FAR more likely to have a security compromise from voluntarily answering phishing scams than from malware.
Do you get scammed much? You certainly fell for this one!
Never, NEVER respond with ANY information to someone who calls YOU! NEVER EFFING EVER!!.......
I got a call froma 999 number from my bank advising me of an irregularity....I didn’t even wait until it was over. I hung up and called the number on the back of my card.
I did find out that it was them calling me about a possible irregularity, but I don’t take chances with crap like this.
Turned out it was an ATM malfunctioning the same day I had trouble withdrawing some cash, but got some from another machine. NEVER EFFING EVER! give a call to you information....NEVER!!!!!! How plain can this be?
The only way for a Mac to get infected today is if you install infected software, such as cracked versions of commercial software temptingly offered on a warez site or torrent.
The bad old Windows days of yore when you could get infected just by visiting a website or by opening an email can’t (as in: can’t) happen on Mac OS X.
But your Mac can pass PC viruses along in emails you forward, so it’s polite to run a scanner. The best of them is Sophos, which is free for the Mac. It’s an industrial-class product and, in its Windows form, is the standard for many important companies and institutions, not least of them Stanford University, which I think you’d agree is a computer-savvy sort of place.
Best of all, it is light weight and runs without bogging your system down like “certain others” have been known to do on Windows machines (and I cast a frowning glance at McAfee and Norton, based on past experience).
You’ll find it at http://www.sophos.com/products/free-tools/free-mac-anti-virus/ ...recommended.
By the way, to “prove” a scan has been done: Any anti-malware scanner will present the results of its scan after it’s concluded. Just take a screen-snap of that.
You can Google for evidence of the existence of Leprechauns too... that does not mean they exist!
Please name the viruses that have infected the Mac OSX in the last ten years, exDemMom... the ones IN THE WILD. Not proof-of-concept attempts that have not been seen in the past ten years. That article you inked to in your last post to me claimed 49 Macs were infected by the LeapA virus... and linked to a webpage that claimed 0-49 infected machines on the definition page. But, exDemMom, notice that that infected machine statistic was inclusive of ZERO in its metric. That is because that WAS the number of infected Macs! There were NEVER ANY MACS INFECTED BY LEAP-A because the only place it was seen was in the lab when it's author sent his effort at writing a virus to their lab for their evaluation!
I will repeat, the number of self-replicating, self-transmitting, self-installing computer viruses for Mac OSX in the wild is still ZERO after more than ten years of attempts at writing a successful one.
Your analogy of PCs presence on the internet being like the human population and spread of disease is flawed. The 12,000 machines that were infected by the Witty Worm were NOT NEXT TO EACH OTHER but were spread all over the world... yet they were 100% infected within a half an hour of the Witty Worm being released into the wild. Each and every computer on the internet is next door to every other computer on the internet. . . Your analogy fails on that claim alone. Your computer can be infected by a "typhoid mary" computer merely passing along an infected file that it itself is not susceptible to being infected by. My Mac can be a carrier for emails that carry toxic files that are innocuous to the Mac but that would easily infect a Windows PC... that is the only reason some Mac users actually run AV software, to detect and delete malicious Windows viruses in email and other files they may unwittingly pass on to their Windows using friends when they forward email.
And you are wrong about the flaw you claim in my analogy. The US Army does not think so. They moved their servers for their public website to Macs because they got sick and tired of being constantly hacked. The US Army's website is now run on Macs and has been for over twelve years and has not been hacked in that time. Wonder why. Your claim that the Macs are only used in the home is bogus based on your wishful thinking. You have no proof... as is the rest of your post. You don't know. The fact is that you don't get to 65,000,000 Mac sales by just reselling to your base. The fact is that every years in the last ten years more than half of all Mac sales are to switchers or to new, first time computer buyers... Most of the Fortune 500 are deploying Macs.
Macs are UNIX based machines and are used heavily in research and other uses. Your claims are mere wishful thinking based on no facts at all. I know what I am talking about. You don't.
I do NOT recommend Sophos' free AV... because to get ANY Mac malware they TURN OFF the system level anti-Trojan protection so their AV can find some. DO NOT USE IT!
It was reported when Sophos first released their AV software... and their lists started to report the known Mac Trojans being found WITHOUT the OS intercepting them. People asked how that could be... and the only way was if the System Core level protections were turned off to allow the download to proceed to above system level interception so that Sophos' AV could load it and examine it. QED. They turned it off. Their software does things at the system level that should not be allowed. You have to give ROOT level permission to install Sophos anti-Virus and that does it.
Wanted to post to all of you Avira AntiVir Rescue System this is new AntiVir used to be real good. I am downloading it now it comes as an ISO or a Windows EXE file you might want to check it out.
Avira AntiVir Personal - Free is and remains free. The license is extended automatically through updates so it is still free.
http://www.avira.com/en/support-download-avira-antivir-rescue-system
Thank you all for you responses. :) Below is a final update to this situation, if you are still interested or even remember hehe (sorry, I don’t post very much); fear not, I will not use this ping list again.
I finally got the scan to work. I had to delete a .SITX file which was odd. Then it proceeded normally, to only report as predicted, no infection.
So, thank you all for the input. :) I will be analyzing this for months, you ALL have said something worthy of consideration IMO, or else I would not be pinging you at this time, I assure you. I am still considering whether or not to re-initiate online banking at this time.
When I called back to Wells-Fargo to reactivate my account, they were not as insistent about a virus scan. The events are as indicated: When I INITIALLY called, they were as insistent as I have previously indicated on this thread. When I called a few days later, it was no longer a precondition for anything. I just wanted to make that clear too.
Again, thank you all, and God bless you for taking the time each of you did. :)
Well, thanks for the update anyway. And in light of this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2698883/posts
I don’t know about online banking. Frankly, more and more I wonder about being online at all! ;)
And I”m only halfway kidding.
You are welcome.
Now get back to work! /s
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.