Dropbox and Avast

[paultilling]

I have Avast installed on my Macbook Air MacOs X.11.6 El Capitan. (I thought it might be time to protect my Apple at last)
I just tried downloading Dropbox and Avast keeps thinking Dropbox is malware.
I get 'infection blocked' messages all the time even though I have not used Dropbox yet. It says "Avast has blocked a threat and moved it to the chest"
How can I stop this please? Is this a known problem?
Should I deactivate dropbox? (or Avast)
Any advice much appreciated.
Paul

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Take a look through our Security Awareness sub-forum and you'll find that we generally don't recommend running any sort of anti-virus on your Mac. Apart from identifying valid items are malware, they just generally slow your machine down without adding any protection or benefit.

 

[IWT]

May I second Raz0rEdge's comment.

Avast, along with Sophos and many other so-called AV protection suites, is known to cause havoc almost every time legitimate additions are made to your system.

In your case, Dropbox, sometimes Evernote, frequently Updates from Apple. In all these instances the AV thinks this is malware or a "virus" and either blocks them or, in the case of Apple Updates, corrupts them.

As there are no "wild" viruses which attack Macs, there is nothing of this nature to detect. But there are all sorts of Malware including Ransom-ware which these AV products are not designed to detect.

And, of course, all the AV products, to a lesser or greater degree, slow down your Mac.

The advice given on many occasions in these forums is:

1. Uninstall your AV immediately. You may actually find this quite difficult with some of these suites as they are so tenacious and leave a trail throughout your system.

2. Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware App and use it to scan for any malware.

3. Download Ghostery and Adblock Plus as browser extensions to prevent tracking and ads, respectively.

Ian

 

[harryb2448]

What do you believe you are protecting your Mac from? There are still no Mac OS X viruses, only a handful of malware items which AV software sellers love to call 'viruses' to scare Mac buyers into purchasing their nefarious products. What happens you you update the virus data bases? It downloads Windows data bases only as there are no Mac viruses.

Read an interesting article on AVAST! and see it actually distributes malware. Malwarebytes for Mac included in the link is highly recommended here:-


http://www.thesafemac.com/avast-installs-adware/

 

[paultilling]

Thank you for your advice, I have uninstalled Avast now. It actually found nearly a couple of hundred suspicious apps that I guess were all PC viruses. It was impossible to use with Dropbox in any case.
I had heard that there are now some Malware active on the AppleMac platform and that we should start using security software.
Anyway I am now using the Malwarebytes as you advise.
Thanks
Paul

 

[ferrarr]

The only extra security, aside from Mac OS X, that I use, would be Extensions or Add-Ons to my browsers. Like Ghostery and AdBlock Plus.

https://www.ghostery.com
https://adblockplus.org

 

[MacInWin]

Thank you for your advice, I have uninstalled Avast now. It actually found nearly a couple of hundred suspicious apps that I guess were all PC viruses. It was impossible to use with Dropbox in any case.

I'd bet they are all in your email. Email from Windows users.