Removed quarantine folder that I thought was Mcafee - was it a Apple file ?

Question

Level 1

8 points

Removed quarantine folder that I thought was Mcafee - was it a Apple file ?

I had installed Mcafee and was having issues so opted to remove it from my Mac. The problem was it was not fully uninstalling so I had to get Mcafee Tech support to help remove it. I later noticed a "quarantine" folder under the same path that the Mcafee tech took me to to delete left over files ( under /usr/local/). I thought this was a left over Mcafee file so I dragged it to trash and deleted it. But now I think it was an Apple system file :-(. I tried to add a quarantine folder under usr/local but can't. Any suggestions? I'm on a Mac Book Air running High Sierra. Can this removal cause damage? Thanks!

MacBook Air 11″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Dec 27, 2021 12:36 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Dec 28, 2021 3:10 PM in response to Mypolar

/usr/local is the path to locally-installed apps and tools.

Apple doesn’t install stuff there, but add-on tools such as Homebrew do.

Too many add-on security products have been problematic and for many years, and too often users find add-on anti-malware is poor trade-off, as compared with what little malware is around and not already handled by the built-in defenses.

Some background: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8841

As for data privacy, one security vendor was found reselling personal;y-identified web browsing habits and web purchasing info, and I’d be surprised if some of the other vendors weren’t also involved with some equally shady dealings.

Reply