Apple Mac computers targeted by ransomware and spyware

Why are we continuing to insist that incredibly complicated and unrestricted computing devices which served well a few million highly technical folk a few decades ago can equally smoothly well serve ~8 billion people of varied capacities and hues?<p>At this point we need to accept that severely locked down and curated devices are the easiest and least painful road ahead for the majority of the world&#x27;s citizens to participate in digital transactions, while unrestricted computing devices can used by those who are learning or specifically involved in technical tasks or are simply those who agree that they know what they&#x27;re doing and the tradeoffs involved.<p>Am not saying unrestricted devices should be banned. It&#x27;s just that they should come with warnings on the box and an advisory to use locked devices if the intent is to simply buy it and mindlessly use it.

I use a Mac for work and personal, and I feel like I take the reasonable precautions to avoid malware&#x2F;ransomware&#x2F;spyware&#x2F;*ware (ex. prefer the App Store when possible, only download stuff from trusted sources, etc.) What more can I do to be safe? In 2017, is it recommended to use some kind of antivirus on a Mac? I&#x27;ve always been told it&#x27;s unnecessary, but it seems like nefarious software is becoming more commonplace on the Mac.

There is practically zero information in this article.

This is an interesting tidbit:<p>&gt; However, they added, any files scrambled with the ransomware would be completely lost because it did a very poor job of handling the decryption keys needed to restore data.<p>In past discussions of ransomware, the question is always asked: if you pay, how can you be sure you&#x27;ll get your files back? The standard answer seems to be, of course you&#x27;ll get your files back, the criminals want to keep a good reputation so you&#x27;ll have the greatest incentive to pay, and they have no reason not to.<p>I guess this shows one potential weakness of that idea. Criminals may not <i>want</i> to destroy your files, but might do so by accident.

This is an argument for only installing things from the App Store. I told my parents only to install from there and we never had a problem.

What is the best virus scanner for Mac?

That anyone bothered to orchestrate an attack like this on Apple products seems to say good things for Apple&#x27;s business. Although at that same time it seems to cast doubt on Apple&#x27;s perceived superiority on the security front.<p>Oh well, I&#x27;ll keep going with my preferred platform: Windows as a host for my browser and SSH to FreeBSD and Ubuntu servers.