You knew it was coming. We’ve all heard the fanboi refrain “Macs don’t get virus infections”. Um, yeah. About that one, it would appear that if you poke the VXers long enough that they will come for you.
In an interview that was posted today over at ZDNet, Ed Bott (who pens the “Microsoft Report” hmm, indeed) met with an unnamed AppleCare support staffer.
From ZDNet:
Over the weekend, I got an e-mail from an AppleCare support rep, who was responding to my recent reports of Mac malware being found in the wild. At least one prominent voice in the Mac community dismisses these reports as “crying wolf.†(ed. *cough* Gruber *cough*) The view from inside an Apple call center says it’s for real:
I can tell you for a fact, many, many people are falling for this attack. Our call volume here at AppleCare is 4-5x higher than normal and [the overwhelming majority] of our calls are about this Mac Defender and its aliases. Many frustrated Mac users think their Mac is impervious to viruses and think this is a real warning from Apple. I really wish I could say not many people will fall for this, but in this last week, we have had nothing but Mac Defender and similar calls.
This really should not be a surprise but, due to this type of marketing (watch the video) Mac users at large have been programmed to believe that they are safe.
Yeah, whoops.
(Image used under CC from mastrobiggo)
