Last spring there was a well documented scam called MacDefender or MacGuard. This turned out to be a trojan virus that thousands of Mac user’s got tricked into downloading. It was a big enough epidemic that Apple issued a Security Update on May 31, 2011 specifically to help remove and protect against such a threat.
That said, I am particularly cautious when I see all these “MacKeeper” pop-up ads online. I know some of you have purchased and installed MacKeeper and probably feel it is working fine and not a threat in any way.
I have seen a couple computers come in where the customer has installed MacKeeper to “speed up” the Mac, however it actually seemed to slow it down. One thing I noticed was you could open Activity Monitor and the MacKeeper process would not “quit” or even allow a “force quit”.
I also “Googled” MacKeeper and have found many articles and blogs where there seems to be very mixed feedback. However, the fact there is as much (if not more) negative feedback and warnings concern me enough that I personally would keep looking for a different product and not take a chance on MacKeeper.
It currently is available in Apple’s “App Store” listed as “911 Bundle”. Just because a program is listed in the App Store does not necessarily mean that it has Apple’s stamp of approval. Currently it has only a 2 of 5 star rating from Customer Ratings… this would seem to be another flag.
Here is a link to an article that does not pull any punches in criticizing MacKeeper and even offers step-by-step instructions on how to remove it from your system.
http://applehelpwriter.com/2011/09/21/how-to-uninstall-mackeeper-malware/
So the jury is out… is MacKeeper a keeper or just a bad product?
-roger
