I got an email today from some friends who run a Bay Area IT consultancy. They deal almost exclusively in the PC trade but are Mac savvy themselves, so I was startled a bit by the subject line for their monthly Good News / Bad News newsletter: Two Very Bad Mac OSX Viruses.

Of course, I knew from chatter over the summer and from more recent conversation that the days of Macs being impervious to viruses and malware are probably numbered and sure enough, even Apple Support now officially recommends users install antivirus protection on Mac systems:

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.

The Apple knowledge base article goes on to recommend programs from Intego, Symantec/Norton and McAfee, all of which are commercially licensed products.

My consulting friends recommended iAntivirus, which is a free program, and said, “We have never used it but reviewers say it is good for being a free program. Download and use all free software with caution!”

Another free Mac virus checker (though the developer gratefully accepts all donations) is ClamXav, an updated version of which was released on Monday; the program gets 4.25 stars at Mac Update.

So, is that it? Are we all going to opt for the flu shot from now on? If you’ve installed antivirus software on your Mac, tell us how it’s going and what you like. If you haven’t, or don’t plan to, tell us why in comments.

The steps to get the free ESET Smart Security username and password again requires you to go through proxy. Since many of you had problems tunneling through open proxy, I will introduce you a few more tools and sites that can help you find a working china open proxy more easily. To get your free ESET Smart Security username and password valid for 3 months, just follow the steps below.

1. First we need to look for open proxy that belongs to China. Here are 3 sites (Roinstrument, XROXY, Pass) that contains china open proxy. I’d suggest you to copy all the china proxies ip address and port to a text file with the format IP:Port (eg: 202.188.0.133:80) per line.

2a. Open proxy usually don’t last long so you’ll have to test them. One of the easiest and fastest way to test the proxies is by using an online proxy checker. Just paste a the list of proxy addresses which you’ve created in step 1 to the form and click the Check Proxy! button. When finished testing, the good working proxies will be listed at the end of the page.

2b. If you have a list of proxies and not categorized according to country, here is a free and simple tool called Country Detector where you can load the proxy list, and it’ll produce a new list with country code next to the proxy address. The ip-to-country database is very old, you might need to download the latest database and then replace the GeoIP.dat file which is in the same location as CountryDetector.exe.

3. Once you have a working china open proxy, run Proxifier. Go to Options > Proxy Settings…

Click Add button, enter the proxy address and port. Next you need to select the protocol of the proxy. If the online proxy checker tells you that it is a “good socks 4 proxies”, then select SOCKS Version 4. Now click the Check button. You might want to enable SOCKS 4A extension if the testing fails. Once you get the message “Proxy is ready to work with Proxifier”, proceed to next step. Otherwise keep testing until you get a working proxy.

4. Open http://www.eset.com.cn/trial/ess_ac_90/ and click the yellow colored button.

5. Enter your name, email, confirm email again and click the button.

Note down the 24-digit activation code which can be used to convert it into a working ESET Smart Security username and password valid for 3 months.

6. If you’ve already installed ESET Smart Security, skip this step. If not, disable Proxifier, go to Australia’s NOD32 website to request for a 1 month trial license. Just enter your email address and hit the Submit button. Check your email and you should receive an email from noreply@eset.sk with the suject “ESET Smart Security - Trial License”. Note down the 1 month trial ESET username and password. Download the latest ESET Smart Security here and install. Enter the ESET username and password when requested. If you’re using a 64-bit Windows operating system, you have to download this installer instead. During installation, check “Setup update parameters later” when asked to enter your ESET Smart Security username and password.

7. Now download ESET Activation Tool. This ESET Activation Tool is an official program by ESET to activate/convert the 24 digit serial number into a genuine ESET Smart Security username and password. Re-enable Proxifier and run essact.exe. Make sure the first option “Activate with Activation Code” is selected. Enter your name, email and the 24-digit activation code. The name and email in the activation tool is not important so you can enter anything. If you got it right, you should see the message “Activation succeed, the Expiry Date is:2009-MM-DD”

8. Now launch ESET NOD32 Antivirus, click the Setup icon on the left hand side and then click Username and Password setup. You should only see the NOD32 username with the password hidden. To view the hidden password, download Asterisk Logger. Extract, run astlog.exe and voila! the ESET Smart Security password is revealed! I’ve tested the 3 months free ESET Smart Security username and password on NOD32View and the license can be used on both NOD32 Antivirus and Smart Security.

Important Note: This ESET Smart Security offer page logs the IP address, browser cookies and also email. In order for this to work, you must use a china proxy that has never been used to request the 24 digit ESET Smart Security activation code. The 24-digit code generated is based on your email address. Entering the same email will always give you the same code.

If you still can’t get the free ESET Smart Security username and password after trying for hours and about to throw your keyboard, try searching for Super GetValID V2 by Denniz / MasterSteven. It is only a vbs script that is able to connect to 25 websites, grabs all valid ESET Smart Security username and password, and automatically registers ESS to use the license. Super GetValID V2 is WAY better than NodLogin or NodEnabler because it connects to 25 sites simultaneously and the chances of all sites failing is very slim.

Thanks Kino for helping me to confirm on the offer restrictions.

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