Mr. Sells, 

This evening I received a virus warning on Safari. It said that a virus -- or several -- had infected my computer and I should download a virus protector. However, everything froze up. I could not download the so called virus protector or anything else on Safari. Nor could I shut down the computer. I could access Word, however. I was finally able to Force Quit Safari and shut down the computer. When I rebooted, it seems to be working. My wife is afraid that she may have received a virus in an email from a friend. Should we worry about this? What could have caused the episode and could it be doing damage? 

Thanks

_____

You are certainly right to be concerned about viruses but if you aren’t running Windows then you can relax. The message you saw was most likely a popup window from a website trying to sell some silly software and they were using the warning as a scare tactic to get people to purchase something. When it attempted to run its code, it saw that you were not running internet explorer on windows and gave up. As far as Safari locking up, it’s not perfect but fairly stable. I would not worry at all. While the mac is a great computer, it’s not without occasional flaws. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about any viruses for the mac yet. There are many reasons for no viruses for the mac:

Very secure operating system that requires password authentication whenever installing things
Built on Unix
smaller market share than Microsoft
Nicer users

But the overwhelming reason is that OS X is just more secure. If you did get a virus for your mac then you would be the first in many years and we’d want to notify CNN.

The latest ad from apple is actually true:
Apple - Get a Mac - Watch the TV Ads - Biohazard Suit