# Virus, or spoof?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/virus-or-spoof/629204>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 24, 2012, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/virus-or-spoof/629204 "2012-07-24T03:25:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/virus-or-spoof/629204/1 "2012-07-24T03:25:10Z")

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I just received an email from an SDMB member saying she received spam from my address. I bought a new Mac a month ago, so I suspect that it’s not a virus. Instead, I’m guessing that my email address is on a mailing list somewhere, it was sold, and someone is spoofing from the list.

Which is more likely? Any way I can check?

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**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/virus-or-spoof/629204/2 "2012-07-24T03:56:31Z")

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FYI: Your email address is right there in the “Contact Info” in your profile, so someone could have got it from there.

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**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/virus-or-spoof/629204/3 "2012-07-24T05:18:43Z")

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Just to add… iOS isn’t immune to viruses. It’s just a stolen version of \*nix. No better or worse than Win.

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**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2012, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/virus-or-spoof/629204/4 "2012-07-24T06:41:29Z")

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> [@GiantRat](#):
>
> Just to add… iOS isn’t immune to viruses. It’s just a stolen version of \*nix. No better or worse than Win.

Pah! why doe this silly mnene keep rolling around? Mac OSX and thus iOS (which doesn’t run on Macs - only iPhones, and iPads) is based on NeXTStep, which is based upon Mach. There is a BSD layer that provides Unix services, but that is a small part of the code base or overall system. Important, yes, but hardly the dominant component. The kernel isn’t any sort of Unix, nor is the file system, GUI, device driver architecture, graphics layer (Quartz, Core Image, Core Video etc), all the main APIs (Carbon - still in OSX - and Cocoa). There is enough Unix to make the system really nice to configure and administer and for OSX allow you to easily port open source Unix compatible applications, but that is about it. It is easy to get Unix code to work under OSX, but impossible to get OSX code to work under any Unix.