What is MacKeeper?

[GLaDOS]

Hey everyone,

So my girlfriend calls me today and says she downloaded a program called MacKeeper from a free streaming tv website. Being the computer nerd I am, the alarms instantly went off. She said she used it to do a scan of her computer and it found a number of corrections to make.

I went onto Google to do some reading about this (I'm a Windows guy mostly) and I found a lot of mixed reviews. It looked as if it could be legit, but a lot of people/users had negative things to say it in the blogging world. I was wondering if that's just because "Macs don't get viruses" so anyone offering Mac AV must be a scammer.

So could those living in the walled garden give me some insight as to what Mac Keeper is and if I should be heading over there to remove it? Thanks for all your help!

 

[GLaDOS]

And if it does need to be removed could anyone recommend any tools I could use to ensure I get it completely off? I have my typical suite of tools for Windows, but I'm not sure how many of them can be used on a Mac.

 

[hikaricloud]

From what I can tell, it's not malware or a virus. It gets confused with MacDefender a lot, and it does have a lot to do with the "Macs don't get viruses" mentality.

That being said, there are some crappy things about the company, such as their super aggressive advertising that can easily be seen as spammy and possibly malware-ish, with pop-under ads and such. Their affiliate program seems to be fairly abused as well, most of the really terrible adverts come from third parties they apparently don't have control over.

As long as it's the real MacKeeper, I don't think she's in any trouble, the company seems legit. They were a MacWorld sponser, they paired up with Avira (another legit antivirus company), and they have a lite version of their software in the Mac App Store, and they are pretty careful to make sure no malware gets through in there.

 

[GLaDOS]

From what I can tell, it's not malware or a virus. It gets confused with MacDefender a lot, and it does have a lot to do with the "Macs don't get viruses" mentality.

That being said, there are some crappy things about the company, such as their super aggressive advertising that can easily be seen as spammy and possibly malware-ish, with pop-under ads and such. Their affiliate program seems to be fairly abused as well, most of the really terrible adverts come from third parties they apparently don't have control over.

As long as it's the real MacKeeper, I don't think she's in any trouble, the company seems legit. They were a MacWorld sponser, they paired up with Avira (another legit antivirus company), and they have a lite version of their software in the Mac App Store, and they are pretty careful to make sure no malware gets through in there.

Yeah, that's kind of the sense I was getting with this program (they were a legit company with aggressive marketing). This may be a dumb question as I haven't actually sat down in front of her computer yet, but is there any way to tell whether she has a real copy of MacKeeper? The only part that gets me nervous is that she grabbed it from a pop-up on a website that streams free tv, movies, etc.

Also, could anyone recommend any replacements for MacKeeper - basically anything that does system cleanup and maintenance would be great. If it has virus, malware, etc. protection - even better lol!

 

[hikaricloud]

I was actually thinking about that, it does seem strange...but who knows with their aggressive marketing.

As far as replacements for the program, I personally used to us ClamXav (since it's free), and it worked fairly well. Only downsides would be no realtime protection (last I checked) and the virus definitions may not be as broad as other paid options.

Normally I'd recommend ESET, but I've been hearing/reading a lot of great things about Intego VirusBarrier X6. It seems to have a lot of features at the same cost of ESET.

 

[richardatj]

1) There's better software out there, some backed by 3 decades of Mac experience. Virus Barrier, ClamXAV...
2) There's been 1 virus in the past 5 years I can remember. The remainder are trojans and you'd lave to be logged in as "Admin" or enter the admin password to let it in (as the user is technically the gatekeeper).
3) The Mac comes with built in firewall. It's going to report anything inside the Mac that's trying to subvert and dial home.
4) I thought MacKeeper was for cleaning up the Mac: Your use of the term "Corrections" implies it's a total scam piece of software as Apple's Disk Utilities (HDD->Applications->Utilities->Disk Utilities) cleans up the HDD by fixing Permissions and even the HDD when required!!! It's a Linux based OS, so that's really all that is needed.

 

[john88450]

i just got my mac last week. When i go on safari the first thing that comes up is the MacKeeper. what can i do so this does not happen?