There’s nothing new about notification adware, system-level alerts from malicious websites that try to lure you into sharing login credentials, credit card info, or other personal information. A recent uptick in reports caused Adam Engst to explore the topic more deeply to help readers learn to identify and eliminate abusive notifications.

A macOS 13.0 Ventura bug revolving around Full Disk Access permissions is preventing real-time protection features in security software from operating. Thomas Reed of Malwarebytes shares a workaround until Apple fixes the bug in macOS 13.1.

A few months ago, Apple quietly updated Monterey, Big Sur, and Catalina with XProtect Remediator, a new malware scanner built into XProtect, so your Mac is now regularly checking for malware in the background. Howard Oakley uncovered it and offers some technical details.

This week, Adam asks for help tracking down an email formatting bug in TidBITS issues, points those worried about ransomware to RansomWhere and Retrospect 18, and looks at more utilities that perform OCR on text in images.

Malwarebytes Labs has published its annual report on the state of malware in the computer industry, with a section focusing on the Mac. The good news is that the number of malware detections is down 38% and very little detected Mac malware is dangerous; the bad news is that Apple’s security enhancements have made it harder to remove potentially unwanted programs (PUPs).