is it safe to download the mackeeper?

MacKeeper is horrible malware that causes a "virus warning" to pop up in your browser that freezes the functionality of your computer until you force quit the browser several times. I'm STILL trying to get rid of it! You are misrepresenting your product and I can't imagine what you are gaining from hijacking peoples computers like this other than an evil twisted chuckle. Why don't you show some good will towards the "legitimacy" of your product and tell us how to stop this annoying malicious virus addware that all of sudden started popping up AFTER we did the free (except for the major headache of this software) download? I have deleted it from my system (which was a headache as well) and now I'm getting this popup which I NEVER got before this bogus mackeeper program.

No... no and no.

You do not need that for a Mac. Most third party utilities can cause way more trouble then they are worth and MacKeeper is at the top of the list.

If you leave your Mac on overnight, it will run maintenance for you.

See here: Mac Maintenance Quick Assist

This is a great piece of software,I bought it and use it.No problems at all.

So you registered today and made your first post ever in order to tell us that. Someone using the same name also registered with an anonymizing VPN service. Isn't that a strange coincidence, considering that the developer of the MacKeeper garbage promotes his product on fake review sites that hide his identity?

Yep, that's right. I can't get any joy out of the 'applehelpwriter.com' domain, nor out of wordpress support - despite repeated requests - to find out why the domain name I paid for is suddenly unavailable.

Out of interest, the graph below (inside the red circle) which displays hits/hour shows that the site was down until I changed the nameserver (that gap represents about 12 hours of time).

My blog only ever generates a modest but steady amount of hits of around 1,000 a day. Since September, when the Mackeeper post went up, about 40% of that daily traffic has been generated by the Mackeeper uninstall post.

Now who, or what, could be cause of the applehelpwiter.com domain returning "the connection was unexpectedly dropped because the server may be busy" (as the error mesage goes, or something like that) is an utter mystery.

I downloaded it months ago and use it frequently to removed unneeded files.

Which files are "unneeded?" MacKeeper seems to have a different opinion from the folks at Apple, who designed the system. On a fresh Mac OS X 10.8.2 install, with absolutely nothing else installed, MacKeeper claims that there are 1,411 "junk" files:

Really? Apple doesn't seem to think those files are junk, since they put them there. Do you believe that the folks at Zeobit know Mac OS X better than Apple, or that they're removing stuff that really shouldn't be removed?

Macs don't need "cleaning" anyway. See The myth of the dirty Mac.

There are moderators here from Apple who check posts for violations of TOU.

There is no one here from Apple to read these forums for problems.

If you wish to get get something to Apple use feedback

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Allan

premx99 wrote:

This is why I don't Subscribe to Mac forums.I've never met a group of people,that were so Strident,and closed minded and Militant in all their views,from everything to copying dvd's to antivirusware to Anything even remotly

outside of mainstream Apple thinking...You people are truly UNBELIVABLE!!!!!!!

Well, if you don't subscribe to Mac forums, then it's not very nice to make such a blanket statement about people who do frequent them. Over and over again, people find that some so-called optimizing software (Mackeeper being among them) is problematic.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3261376

http://applehelpwriter.com/2011/09/21/how-to-uninstall-mackeeper-malware/

So, with Phil Stokes giving detailed instructions on how to remove the blankety-blank thing, why not just save the trouble by skipping the download and installation in the first place?

This is not close-mindedness; this is the straight story, with a lot of research into the subject.

Some day, Macs may get hit with viruses, but that day is not today.

There are quite a few other good utilities that can actually benefit a Mac. Mackeeper is not one of them.

The best thing you can do with a Mac is to buy an external FireWire drive and use SuperDuper! (my preference) to keep a bootable clone (or clones) of your hard drive on the external.

My MacBook Pro has a 500 GB hard drive. I keep two external hard drives: a 1 TB external FireWire drive partitioned into two partitions (500 GB each) and a 2 TB external FireWire drive partitioned into four partitions (500 GB each), so the two drives together offer me the possibility of having six bootable backups of my hard drive. When I make a new clone, I overwrite the oldest one, naming each volume with the date I cloned my hard drive.

People talk about hard drive maintenance, but you really don't need to worry about that as long as you keep a substantial amount of available (free) space on your internal hard drive so it has plenty of room for temporary files.

Mac OS X pretty much takes care of itself.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2319#

This link bears repeating:

http://www.reedcorner.net/news.php/?p=245

Spotlight's probably in a wobble. A few things you could do:

1. Tell Spotlight to start again. Open Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app) and copy/paste this command:

sudo mdutil -E /

Press 'return'. You'll be asked for your password, which will not echo when you type it, so type carefully.

Give Spotlight a few minutes then check on its progress, does it look like it's going to complete in a reasonable amount of time? If the problem persists

2. Restart your Mac in Safe mode and log in to your account.

This'll take a while. When it's finished, immediately restart and log in normally and check on Spotlight again.

Do not install MacKeeper (and how to uninstall it if you have):

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6221

(Please note that references to the original developers, Zeobit, also now refer to Kromtech Alliance Corp, who acquired MacKeeper and PCKeeper from ZeoBit LLC in early 2013.)

Short answer: I don't recommend it, but it's not "a scam" or malware, per se. If you use it, you may have some real performance issues.

Me: I was an actual MacKeeper user (paid version) for about two years. What follows is my experience and conclusions. I am not a paid reviewer, nor tech professional. I am an educator with about 15 years of experience using Macs. I am what most people would call a "prosumer," in that I know a good deal about my systerm, but am not a techie, anti-utility software zealot, etc. I have no affiliation with Zeobit (manufacturer of MacKeeper) nor any of its competitors.

I bought MacKeeper in 2011, and then upgraded last year. I used it to remove junk files and duplicates, and experimented with the anti-virus software. I didn't use most of the other features.

The problem: I am running a 2009 15" Macbook Pro 2.8GHZ Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 512GB HDD. Over the past year, it has been having major performance issues. Slowdowns, hangups, applications quitting and more were all becoming the norm. I deleted duplicate files and ran MacKeeper a few times a month. I also ran permissions repairs regularly (disk utility). I looked for the cause of the slowdowns everywhere, from too many user accounts being open, to resource hogs. I decided that MacKeeper's Anti-Virus software was just taking up too much RAM and CPU, so I disabled it. I continued experiencing slowdowns and started monitoring my available RAM with a freeware app called Memory Clean. It often reported that I had less than 500MB available, even with very light usage, application wise. After "cleaning" memory, I could get my available RAM to about 1.5GB, max. I struggled with these issues for a year or more, and was about ready to concede defeat and buy a new machine. I figured my MBP was over four years old, and perhaps running Mountain Lion and normal wear/tear were just too much.

This morning, I noticed that the biggest resource hog on my system was a process called "MacKeeper Helper." The process relaunches even when it is forced to quit. It was consuming over 100MB of RAM and up to 99 percent of my CPU at times! I also noticed a process called "anti-virus" that also could not be quit, and was consuming over 100MB of RAM itself. I started researching how to kill these processes, and was introduced the the Great Online MacKeeper Controversy. Here is what I learned:

• Some in the Mac community have pure hatred for this product (and some hate all like it).
• There were numerous user reports of it slowing down systems
• Zeobit seemed to be guilty of questionable ethics, particularly in its advertising.
• There was no way to stop MacKeeper Helper and Anti-Virus processes from running with deleting the entire application.
• I wasn't the only one annoyed by MacKeeper's system pop-ups, trying to sell me something I already bought.
• The software got good professional reviews, even from well-respected publications (e.g. MacWorld)
• It is often confused with Mac Defender, which WAS malware. They two are not associated.

The Decision: After researching ways of fully uninstalling MacKeeper (and considering whether or not I should), I decided to try the uninstall instructions from the manufacturer. It said that it would remove ALL traces of the application. I also didn't want to get into too much Terminal work and manually deleting things, as some users suggested doing. I followed the process (close app, drag to trash, enter password, click "uninstall"). I then ran a permissions repair and restarted.

The Results: I have been MacKeeper-free for about an hour as I write this. Put simply, my problems appear to be completely solved. MacKeeper Helper and Anti-Virus are gone. Available RAM is now up to 2.75GB. I have experienced no slowdowns or app crashes. Even bootup appeared to be considerably faster. Launching iPhoto with thousands of images now takes a few seconds instead of minutes. Everything feels faster. It's like I have my Mac back! I was ready to admit defeat and dish out another $2500+ that I didn't have. I now think that won't be necessary!

What Should Yo Do? You'll find a lot of controversy out there between professional reviews, ethically dubious paid reviews, Zeobit's own defense through public statements, and Mac users themselves. Some users like it, and swear up and down they are real people. Others are extremely angry and hate the product with the passion of 1,000 burning suns. All I can do is tell you my experience and make the following statement:

The bottom line is that I would not install MacKeeper/buy MacKeeper on my Mac. After investigating my own system's problems (which made iit nearly unusable) and concluding that MacKeeper might be the issue, I uninstalled it. Magically, all my issues went away. So...I report, you decide. Best of luck.

Message was edited by: SDW2001

uhh

BTW mackeeper is totally useless program ever, it's just a doubled some system features. it's just a hysteric spam. Surprising that Apple is still not banned them.

just my opinion

There is a commercial product called MacKeeper, which is worthless junk but not a trojan as far as I know, and there is a trojan that sometimes also uses that name or a variation of it. If the OP was prompted by a website to install something called MacKeeper, it was probably the trojan. Even if it wasn't, he shouldn't install it.

Don't download mackeeper!

1st: when you get the pop-ups, they will get worse over time. I heard from other people they even could'nt open their Safari anymore. The problem with mackeeper pop-ups is that they you can't view a website before you press some buttons of them (wich leeds to problems) and that they aren't pop-ups from the site you're viewing (so the site you're viewing don't get paid for it).

I never downloaded mackeeper but still the pop-up would show up more frequently over time, wich was really frustrating.

To avoid this pop-ups: download glimmerblocker!

Really search on internet if you can trust it (I also did), but you'll see it's safe. Really great software. Since I downloaded it, and put it on, I never got these problems anymore!

2nd: When you download it, you got some serious problems. It isn't good software at all. It slows your mac to a new level. I don't know what to do in this case.

As a representative of Zeobit LLC - the developers of MacKeeper, I would like to persuade you it's safe indeed to download our app. It has nothing in common with malware - vice versa, it's one of the apps that can help you fight with MacDefender threat you can read about it in the article at CNet 'How to protect your Mac from recent malware' - http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20063683-263.html -

The pop-ups you may have seen are the part of advertizing campaign that is completely legit, in case you click them you'll be redirected to the page giving extra info about our app - the app isn't downloaded or installed.

Speaking about system slowdowns, it's not in the nature of MacKeeper to be the reason of them - and we give you an opportunity to make sure in it yourself - MacKeeper has 15 days full-functional trial so you'll be able to give a try to all its tools, clean your system, try the antivirus and undelete features and more. In case you will notice any slowdowns (while you have to notice the increasing of speed) you can easily remove MacKeeper as it has its own uninstaller so all the components of the app are removed in several clicks with no leftovers.

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link. <Edited by Host>