HT1277 i have an imac and my cable company has stopped my emails because they say i have comp virus.....   thought macs don't get them ***???

I am told by my cable company that my email has a virus so they stopped my emails.   How do I do a virus scan on a mac thought they didn't get viruses?

It is entirely possible for an iMac to acquire and host malware; to be infected with what's often called (sometimes technically incorrectly) "a virus".
This can be due to malware that was explicitly installed and authorized by an administrative user, or can be due to vulnerabilities in existing OS X software.  Recent vulnerabilities that can affect OS X users include those encountered in Safari, in Oracle Java, or in Adobe Flash, among other components.
One of the most common paths for infection are explicitly-requested downloads, and that have then been authenticated by an administrative user.  Basically, a user that's been convinced to download and install and use an administrative password to authenticate the malware installation.  These have been seen with "video players", for instance, where a user downloads and installs an updated player; claimed to be Adobe Flash Player or some other CODEC or player component.
There are other malware attacks possible.  Trojan horses have been seen targetting OS X, for instance.
Depending on the details of the actual infestation here (if there is any infestation here, of course), it is possible for an ISP to spot an infected computer through various available monitoring mechanisms. Your OS X client system could be sending out mail messages directly through protocols that are server-oriented protocols (a rogue SMTP spam engine has been installed on your OS X client, for instance), and that outbound SMTP traffic can be easy to spot at a firewall or network monitor.  It's also possible to spot malware in the attachments in outbound messages that are routed via the ISP's mail servers, as well; various ISPs will scan messages.
The first step is to determine if your system has unauthoriized malware installed.  Ask your ISP for what evidence they have for this infestation; what evidence they believe they've found.  It's also possible that you'll need to purchase anti-malware tools, or (depending on the particular severity of any infestation found) reinitialization and restoration.
It's also possible for another system on your local network to be infested.  Windows boxes, Linux and even printers can become infested these days.
And it's possible that you've received an infected document from somewhere, and have been working on it on OS X; that your system is hosting the malware, but that it's not actually infected.  (OS X, Linux and Unix file services can all host Windows malware easily, for instance, but those systems generally can't be infected by that particular malware.)
And the ISP could be incorrect in their particular report to you.
You'll probably need some help determining if this is a real malware infection, and then cleaning up the problem; somebody with some more experience in interpreting what the ISP has found, and in determining whether that indicates a problem with your OS X system, and then (if so) how to resolve it.  That might be somebody at the Apple Genius bar, or a local Apple specialist.

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