Mac Defender

This worked perfectly! Thank you! I was looking up an image for a DIY show and the Macdefender popped up. that's the only thing I did. I wasn't trying to download anything, just look at an image.

tewfiks wrote: I was looking up an image for a DIY show and the Macdefender popped up. that's the only thing I did.

Sorry if this is getting repetitive, but you said earlier it asked for your password. Just to be completely clear, did you give it, or did it go ahead and install without it? You probably meant it was the only thing you did to prompt the popup, but you just planted a doubt in my mind when you said, "that's the only thing I did."

Force Quit wouldn't work at all when I tried it. It would come back each time I started up, and when I put the machine to sleep it would also run or small opaque windows would appear in the top right of the screen.

What did work was opening system preferences, clicking on accounts, clicking on login items, and deleting MacDefender.

I also found a process file when I opened and searched Activity monitor and deleted the item that was identified.

I got this advice from this users area. Thanks.

I, too, got this problem searching google photos. I was looking for pictures of landscaping with rocks and ornamental grass.

My husband and I are recent converts to a Mac and like many others, thought we were rid of some of these "scareware" headaches we had grown so accustomed to on our old PC. My husband was doing some research this evening for his business and pulled some images off the www.pella.com website and somewhere in that process, the Mac Defender program auto-installed, or he clicked on something that started the installation process. It definitely scared us when all kinds of popups started appearing telling us we had all kinds of infections, and another window appeared to be running a scan. Anyway, we found the instructions in all these threads to shut down the program and trash it, and we found related files to delete also. Folks in the Mac stores have told us repeatedly that buying antivirus software is a waste of money. Is it really?

Joy

Hi Joy

As far as I am aware, there are no virus' for Mac, only malware (like Mac Defender)

You could get a free anti virus application for your Mac, so it wouldn't really be a waste of money - and you would be covered.

But in any case, don't worry about Mac Defender

😀

Thanks TaylorN90. We are so new with our Mac that we don't know what is safe to download in regard to a free anti virus application. I've seen a few mentioned on these threads, however, so we will probably download something soon! We were just relieved to find an answer so quickly to halt all those scary warnings that were cluttering up our screen from this Mac Defender program. "Scareware" is a good word for this!

Joy

Hi Joy

Some free ones are iAntiVirus, Sophos and ClamXav

😀

Taylor

Folks in the Mac stores have told us repeatedly that buying antivirus software is a waste of money. Is it really?

I have been using Macs since 1984.

I've worked at companies with 50+ Macs.

I've used every Mac OS From 1.1 to 10.6.7

I have never seen a Mac virus or known anyone that has.

"Mac Defender" Is not a virus, it is a (weak) "Malware".

Despite multiple layers of protection, I've gotten viruses on my Windows machines that required the hard drives to be erased and reformatted and Windows reinstalled. Mac Defender can be dispensed with in under 5 minutes.

I am not saying that Macs are perfect, just waaaaaay better!

Thankyou to all who have posted here. Am new to mac and love it, your advice was fantastic to get rid of the Mac Defender. I managed to snag my unwanted guest of the back of a pdf. One little question do i need to use an anti virus????

pegleg42 wrote:

One little question do i need to use an anti virus????

I think you can read the 4 or 5 posts above yours and your question will be answered

😀

Yes I agree just got a little excited at getting rid of the B....... and forgot to read the last few posts. Sorry about that.

pegleg42 wrote:

One little question do i need to use an anti virus????

No. But it may be worth checking out Firefox with the NoScript extension, and setting NoScript's preferences to disable CSS attempts, web bugs and iFrames. I suspect iFrames are being used for this one.

WZZZ wrote:

I don't use Safari, but when I did, "automatically open safe files after download" was the first thing I unchecked. It's incredible to me that Apple still has this set as the default option.

The thing is, the OS considers only things like movies, pictures, text files, PDF's, etc. as "safe files" -- IOW, executable files won't be run whether or not this option is checked.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3032201?tstart=0

A friend of mine who is a new Mac user had an issue with Mac Defender this morning. She has it in her downloads folder, but I can't find it in applications, or anywhere else on her computer? I think it downloaded but did not install? Can I get rid of it by simply dragging to the trash since it is only in her downloads folder?