OT: what security system(s) for Apple devices?

[Ken Robb]

I see quite a few offerings. How can they be judged by "normal" people?

[jkbrwn]

May you be more specific? Not sure what 'security systems' is referring to without context.

[Alistair]

I'm not sure what you mean by "security systems" - what's the context?

Do you mean password management for Apple users? If so, the baked-in password management works quite well, if it meets your needs. But, it does largely limit you to the Apple ecosystem. I'm on all Apple devices and Safari meets my needs, so I haven't needed to find a 3rd party password manager.

Apple does have built-in MFA token generation which is easy to use. I've shifted most of my accounts to this.

[Ken Robb]

Sorry to be so vague. I get a LOT of spam emails and one of my pals just told me that he started getting messages from "ME" that are obviously bogus so he thinks I somehow opened my mailbox to hackers. I have been getting adverts for years from Malware Bytes offering various level of on-line protection but there must be MANY more.

I'm looking for advice on cleaning out the hackers and keeping them out in the future.

[jkbrwn]

There's a lot of bases to cover here.

Who is your mail provider?

Absolute first step is updating your password to something long and memorable, long gone are the days of overly complex passwords that expire regularly. Think a sentence that is unique to you, or four randomised words joined by hyphens, for example:

IwasraisedinLondonbutmovedtoNewYorkandthenPasadena

or

Absolutely-bicycle-whitewater-aeroplane

Next would be to enable Multi Factor Authentication on your mailbox - all modern email providers can provide this to you.

Next I'd make sure that there's no mail forwarding happening inside your mailbox, for example forwarding to an external address that you don't own. This is often one of the main aims of compromising someone's mailbox, to set up forwarding, quickly exit the mailbox and then potentially confidential emails will be forwarded without your knowledge.

Malware Bytes is no bad idea to have on a Mac.

Bear in mind that your friend may just be receiving spoofed emails 'from you' i.e. where someone is impersonating you. He may not actually be receiving emails from you. Good that he's being vigilant though.

[Ken Robb]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

There's a lot of bases to cover here.

Who is your mail provider?

Absolute first step is updating your password to something long and memorable, long gone are the days of overly complex passwords that expire regularly. Think a sentence that is unique to you, or four randomised words joined by hyphens, for example:

IwasraisedinLondonbutmovedtoNewYorkandthenPasadena

or

Absolutely-bicycle-whitewater-aeroplane

Next would be to enable Multi Factor Authentication on your mailbox - all modern email providers can provide this to you.

Next I'd make sure that there's no mail forwarding happening inside your mailbox, for example forwarding to an external address that you don't own. This is often one of the main aims of compromising someone's mailbox, to set up forwarding, quickly exit the mailbox and then potentially confidential emails will be forwarded without your knowledge.

Malware Bytes is no bad idea to have on a Mac.

Bear in mind that your friend may just be receiving spoofed emails 'from you' i.e. where someone is impersonating you. He may not actually be receiving emails from you. Good that he's being vigilant though.

Thanks for this info. I'll try to follow your suggestions. Ken

[djg21]

I get mail purportedly from him that contains links to what are supposed to be to photographs on a cloud-based storage app. But if you look at the email headers, the emails aren’t actually from BBDave. This isn’t really an Apple security issue.