Virus protection for Mac

Free virus protection for Mac is often searched for by the Mac users. While there is considerably less free and payable software available for OS X than for Windows, you can still find very good and useful programs out there. Is free virus protection for Mac also available?

Major antivirus companies provide free virus protection for Mac also

This may come as a surprise to you but there are some major names in the virus protection market that provide antivirus not only for Windows but also for Macs. And some of them even provide free virus protection for Mac if you are a home user (if you are a business user or want to purchase virus protection for Mac we have covered that in another article). Let’s take a look at some of them.

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition is a free virus protection program from one of the leaders in the virus protection market, Sophos. Their program is free for home use on your Mac and it runs on both recent versions of OS X, Snow Leopard and Lion. If you are a home user, you are free to download it and install on your Mac.

Free Norton AntiVirus 12 for Mac – Beta

Norton is another virus protection giant who offers free virus protection for your Mac. You can download the Norton AntiVirus 12 for Mac – Beta from their website for free and install it on your computer. Just be careful you have already upgraded to Mac OS X Lion, as it won’t run on Snow Leopard.

Avast! Free Antivirus for Mac

Avast is known as a producer of one of the best free virus protection programs for the Windows platform and now it has started providing free virus protection for Macs also. It’s also running on Snow Leopard and support for OS X 10.7 Lion has been added in August 2011.

Pc Tools iAntiVirus Free

Pc Tools iAntivirus is available as a free version for home users of Mac computers. The program is available for download from their website but be careful because they have not yet released the version for the OS X 10.7, at the moment it runs only on versions 10.5 and 10.6.

ClamXav 2, Free Anti-Virus Solution for Mac OS X

ClamXav is a Mac only free virus protection solution which uses the ClamAV open source antivirus engine as a back end and has the ability to detect both Windows and Mac threats. It has been on the market for several years and it is as proven as the other major brands, if not more. If offers several types of protection and it’s compatible with all versions of Mac OS X from 10.4 to the latest 10.7.

Which free virus protection for Mac to choose?

If you are a home user, you have the ability to choose any one of them. Our advice is to check their specifications and decide for yourself. But we would recommend you to actually choose one and install it. There are people who will tell you that on a Mac you don’t need virus protection (we have discussed that on this site also), but the fact is that there are malicious programs out there that can hurt your computer and your data. So choose your free virus protection for Mac and install it for your own safety.