"What, me worry?" Well, maybe you should - it's a wild, wild Web out there.

If you think OS X is secure enough as it is, you're probably not looking at the bigger picture. No matter how much more secure your Mac is compared to a Windows PC, no machine is totally immune. You still need to be alert and vigilant when you venture past the safer confines of OS X and out onto the Internet. With our tips, you can think different by being more secure.

One of the many joys of using a Mac is not being plagued by the constant onslaught of viruses and security patches that our Windows-using friends must tolerate just to get through the day. Ask a Mac user what he does about security and he'll probably brag about doing nothing. We understand security can be a real buzzkill - and we're not donning our tinfoil hats yet. It's just that we expose ourselves to more and more risks as we continue moving into the uncharted territory of working - and living - online. Hackers, virus writers, and scam artists make it their business to come up with new ways to commit cybercrime and wreak havoc on the Web and on people's individual machines - yes, even Macs.

Know Your Enemy. The two major types of security risks are inbound and outbound. Inbound threats are direct attacks on your computer, either through hacking or with malicious programs like viruses and worms. Outbound threats involve malicious software that has been unwittingly installed on your machine in hopes of transmitting confidential and personal data through snooping, fraud, or theft.

Hackers, viruses, and other security threats do the most damage when they have unlimited access to your Mac. They rely on system vulnerabilities, like an easy-to-guess password or an insecure network port. By default, OS X is configured with these holes closed. Compare that to Windows, which forces users to close security gaps themselves or to have someone do it for them.

Viruses, Trojan horses, worms, and spyware - collectively known as malware - are household words to Windows users. According to the McAfee Avert Labs, in March there were more than 236,000 known malware programs, and only seven of them targeted OS X. (A bizarre footnote to this is that some Windows apologists are likely to see this as a selling point!) Still, before you gloat about having the good sense to use a Mac, you should know that malware isn't unheard of on the Mac OS. Windows and OS X are permission-based operating systems. That means that software, like users, needs administrative privileges to access sensitive parts of the OS. Before Vista, most Windows programs had administrative privileges by default. But in OS X, apps do not have such privileges. Theoretically, you could override such settings and make your Mac a viable breeding ground for viruses.

Most network traffic travels "in the clear," meaning it's not encrypted. When you're on a network - which you are when you're surfing the Web - a snooper employing one of the many readily available packet sniffers could easily "eavesdrop on" and capture what you're sending and receiving, including passwords.

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