Each day McAfee Associates encounters new viruses. Our development staff continuously modifies our software so that it will detect and remove these new virus strains. As a result, every month, McAfee Associates releases a new antivirus build to ensure the protection our customers need and expect.
McAfee offers free online virus signature file updates (.DATs) for the life of your product. However, we cannot guarantee backwards compatibility of the virus signature files with a previous version’s executable (.EXE) files.
The files CLEAN.DAT, NAMES.DAT, and SCAN.DAT all provide virus information to the VirusScan software. These are the data files.
New viruses are discovered at a rate of more than 100 per month. Often, these newer viruses are not detected using the older data files. Virus researchers are laboring constantly to update the files with more and newer virus definitions.
VirusScan for Macintosh v2.0 uses external data files that can easily be updated. Simply download the latest data file, unbinhex and decompress it using Stuffit Expander, and double-click on the update icon. It will automatically update the virus definitions in your system folder.