Norton does not detect viruses but system preferences yes.

Hello, my macbook pro's Monterey very. 12.1 system preferences warn that the system has viruses, malware, etc. the antivirus however, norton, does not detect anything. Can you help me?

Thanks

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Feb 26, 2023 03:47 AM

Reply
2 replies

Feb 26, 2023 09:10 AM in response to Federico8919

I believe you are seeing a pop-up window in your browser that is telling you your machine is infected. This is likely a scam and an attempt to get you to spend money on an unnecessary app.


Close the window and ignore it, and then stop visiting the site that triggers that pop-up.


Also, I'd advise to remove/uninstall the Norton anti-virus app. Active AV apps like this are often the cause of more system problems than they fix. The macOS is very secure and can keep itself quite safe on its own.


If you feel you must scan your Mac from time to time, I and many other veteran users here will

recommend the use of Malwarebytes. It's a lightweight utility that does the job without interfering with the OS.


Please see: macOS - Security - Apple

Also: Ways to avoid malware and harmful apps on Mac - Apple Support


Feb 26, 2023 09:41 AM in response to Federico8919

Well, there seem to be two problems here.


First, you seem to want to believe the advertising pop-ups. Those cannot scan your computer. Websites cannot scan your computer. That’d be a security and privacy catastrophe, as malware scans are intrusive. They access everything. You don;t want a website that can access your everything, so all current browsers seek to block that.


Second, you installed add-on anti-malware. I’d suggest removing that, and update to current and use the built-in anti-malware. That of Monterey and Ventura, particularly.


Add-on anti-malware seldom provides any benefit, too often provides lots of noise (advertising itself to its user). and too often add-on anti-malware provides problems, and some of add-on anti-malware can itself be vulnerable or can itself act as malware, and which can then add vulnerabilities or can (deliberately) leak your private data.


In one recent case, the add-on anti-malware falsely detected non-existent malware for some ancient and rare version of Windows within a core macOS file, and—without regard to the wisdom of blowing away hunks of macOS—both the app and the users then tried to delete the file. macOS blocked all that, preventing the add-on anti-malware and the users from corrupting their macOS install. The add-on anti-maleare eventually and quietly fixed the false positive. In another case, the add-on anti-malware was selling the users’ web browsing and web purchasing activities, all helpfully personally identified for the buyers’ tracking convenience.


These messes with add-on anti-malware are far more common than they should be. And are far less common with the built-in anti-malware; with XProtect, and XProtect Remediator, and related. (Some updates to that built-in anti-malware just shipped, too.)


This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Norton does not detect viruses but system preferences yes.

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