Mac Question - System Doctor (Spyware??)

[tanooki]

I've just been surfing the net using Safari on my Mac. I clicked to a new tab (engadget) and as soon as i did an error message type window came up infront of the browser. It said something about System Doctor. I didn't read it properly (wish i had now) but it was asking me to click to 'OK' so to fix my machine, or something like that. There was also a 'cancel' button and as i couldn't continue using safari until i clicked something i clicked cancel. Anyway it still took me to the System Doctor site, at this point i closed the tab.

I've since checked on google and the results for 'System Doctor' say it is some sort of spyware! As a Mac user does this affect me, as the window has flashed up on my machine has it already affected me?

Thanks

[segages]

Your fine. No doubt it was one of those pop-up flash/window things that look scary to get you to click so the host site gets money. There's no spyware for OSX (yet) just proof of concepts by security firms and whatnot that never get put in the wild.

[bowser123]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=256296&page=2

The key thing here is that thing apparently starts to download a .exe file that is malware.

However, Safari asks if you wish to download any .exe's before you do, and if you did download it it'd be harmless to your Mac. Bare in mind that if you say booted into Windows via bootcamp (if you had an Intel Mac), then you'd be just as susceptible to attacks as a Windows user.

Also, in Safari, go to preferences and untick "open safe files after downloading".

[tanooki]

Thanks for your advice with that. I didn't think there was currently anything to worry OSX, but that's the first time i've seen something like that the whole time i've been using Safari.

Anyway, thanks again

tanooki