Is MacKeeper a legitimate program?

JVillalobos21

Hypochondriacs.

Thats what you have on these forums for the most part. People are tuned to being afraid and they think that pointing out the boogie man is the best way to look like they are intelligent and safe.

FACT:

There is no mac virus that has effected the operation of a mac system that i have seen since 1998. There wasnt any before then either. There are trojans and back door things but you must put in your password in order for a virus to effect your operation. There are no worms as far as i know as i do not believe that unix allows application duplication.

I am not an expert. I have not studied anything but the 12 Macs i have owned since 1998. While i have had to replace ram, connections and hard drives. I have never had a system failure or operational problems due to some virus. I even tried to download some from a site that claimed that they collected Mac viruses. It never worked and my mac just kept on humming.

I will say that it is possible for a mac to carry a virus that does not effect the mac at all but will effect a pc that you transfer file or send emails to. Even thats rare.

I came from a PC and it is wierd to adjust to just using the computer and not fixing it yearly. Other than repair permissions which i do about every 3 months on my macs, I do not ever have to maintenance my system os. Because of heavy use (35-65hr per week) video editing, GFX, CGI and audio design i do use Disk Warior once a year on my hard drives. Disk Warior is never used on my main drive.

Just run your mac and don't worry about virusses the chances of you getting a virus is 75% less than you getting one from a one night stand.

Thomas Reed studies this so i would +1 his post on this issue.

Ok so here's my issue (disclaimer: I have not read all 8 pages of this forum): MacKeeper does advertize itself as anti-virus software, but it also purports to delete unnecessary files, uninstall applications, and generally keep one's computer running smoothly. I have owned MacKeeper in the past, but I don't feel confident saying that it didn't harm my computer in any way. Maybe it made it run slower, I don't know. My point is, however, that a discussion of whether or not Macs get viruses doesn't completely cover the issue and if MacKeeper is a scam, then what other software is there that has the same non-anti-virus functionality of MacKeeper?

emily.wherever wrote:

if MacKeeper is a scam, then what other software is there that has the same non-anti-virus functionality of MacKeeper?

I don't necessarily categorize it as a scam, although some of their advertising methods have been and still are to some extent very scam-like. Their A-V software has actually progressed to the point of being better than average, after starting out as a recycled PC scanner.

As to the other functions, most users will never need them (see Thomas Reed's link above to "The myth of the dirty Mac") and novice users could very well do more harm than good by using them routinely or without knowing exactly what they do. When problems do develop, there are almost always free utilities available to do those same tasks. At the end of Beware MacKeeper, Thomas has a list of alternative software.

I found the article of Thomas Reed excellent: it's very well balanced and spot on. It's a very good read.

You can replace the MacKeeper antivirus by the Free Sophos Mac Antivirus.

Another list of replacement for Mackepper amazing list of Nutilities (non-utilities) can be found here, and they are almost all free, and often, much better. i.e see "Prey"

http://themacschool.blogspot.com/2012/09/mackeeper-is-scam.html

I too unfortunately got tangled up with MacKeeper. I have Apple Care with whom I spent an hour going in and out of windows, files, etc. Whatever magic they did I was free of MacKeeper interference. One thing we did do was look through files/applications to find their name or some link for the file they put in my system. Not a computer person as you can tell. I would recommend Apple Care in this situation.

As you say DO NOT DOWNLOAD MACKEEPER. There may be two groups using this name and one is a scam.

I used Apple Care to fix a problem, and the tech worked and worked until he figured it out. yes, good experience there. I don't recall, however, if it was post-MacKeeper or not.

Biggest problem due to MacKeeper has been with Adobe Acrobat, "organizer database' damage. I have tried all the solutions found on the Web, tossed and reinstalled Acrobat completely. But the problem remains.

Today dealing with a Checkbook upgrade problem. If it turns out to be a MacKeeper problem, I will definitely go back to Apple Care.

To start I would call myself a longtime Mac user but not a pro, I started with a G3 unit and never looked back.

Three or so years ago my current iMac had slowed to nearly unusable. This is when I found MacKeeper, when I first installed it I ran thru the cleanup processes and my iMac was usable again. I now run MacKeeper on my iMac and my Macbook Pro for work. I do not use the real time virus program but I run a scan once a week and run the cleaning system once every three months. In three years MacKeeper has only found two threats on my home computer and nothing on my work computer, to me this sounds about rite. In the three years I have not had any serious issues with either computer that I can relate back to MacKeeper. The couple of complaints I do have is that it wants you to be logged into Zeobit all of the and it slows down time machine. The second of the two issues is why I found this post. My backup drive died and I attached a new drive. I would like to shut down MacKeeper while the full backup is running. I asked their live chat guy how to completely stop MacKeeper and MacKeeper helper and he said it could not be done but I could easily uninstall the program. 1. Click "command+Q" 2. drag MacKeeper to the trash. MacKeeper then uninstalled itself as far as I can tell.

Three or so years ago my current iMac had slowed to nearly unusable. This is when I found MacKeeper, when I first installed it I ran thru the cleanup processes and my iMac was usable again.

Sometimes, files in a Mac's cache can become corrupt, and that can cause all kinds of issues, including performance problems. Although "cleaning" caches is not a good idea on a regular basis, in this case MacKeeper probably helped because of that corruption. Of course, you paid Zeobit money to do something you could have easily done yourself, either by manually deleting some things or by using a number of free alternatives.

This is the unfortunate aspect of MacKeeper... as they say, "every now and then, even a blind squirrel will find a nut."

I've been a Mac Tech for over 12 years now and MacKeeper is Malware and not a legit program, and yes Mac's don't get viruses, ONLY viruses I've ever seen in these 12 years were in OS 9. PC users have the worst herd mentality there is. Oh and my wife owns a PC and it has gotten viruses. My G4 Mirror Doors and now Mac Pro I've had since 2010, not a single virus.

It has been 7 yrs since I made the big shift from a PC to a Mac and I haven't had any problems since. My white macbook is still being used by my wife at present without any hitches. I don't know how I was suckered into trying this MacKeeper crapshoot and boy, did I regret it! I have been able to uninstall it but am still noticing quite a slowdown with my Macbook Pro. I have been wanting to uninstall it for quite sometime now to no avail. Luckily, I found this forum that had links to how to uninstall MacKeeper. I am not a techie, nor am I a hater/cult member. But whoever says that MacKeeper works must be either extremely lucky or highly compensated!

This thread is hilarious. Why are so many people entertaining the obviously fake "pro" MacKeeper posts?

Who honestly logs onto a forum to write positive reviews of anti virus software? Only the bottom of the bucket "click on pr0n website banners and download that file" group of people would require proper anti virus software.

For the most part its not needed if you are not ********. Why would the computer illiterate waste their time with the effort of writing a positive review of some garbage software?

Why are so many people entertaining the obviously fake "pro" MacKeeper posts?

It's not fun, but if no one ever contradicts such posts, then users who don't know anything about it would only read positive posts, buy it, and then find out they've been taken. Remember, there are always new users who know little to nothing about computers, and so don't know what to avoid or believe.

If you want to see hundreds of sock puppets in action, wade through the hundreds of paid for positive comments here. Currently 495 pages of at least half very obvious "glowing" reports responded to by others pointing them out.

I wrote one of the positive to neutral posts, I post positive as well as negative, I believe it is our duty to post evenly on each side. This doesn't mean I make up posts, but I try to post on a good experience for every bad experience when they come along. Without positive posts people cannot make informed decisions. I honestly log into many sites and write reviews with positive opinions and have never been paid by anyone. After reading many of the informative posts I decided to remove MacKeeper from both of my computers. Nothing seemed to change, I upgraded to the new OS and had an issue with some functionality of Mail. While on line with a Apple tech he said "God is your computer slow" he walked me thru a couple of key sequences that reset some stuff and my MacBook much faster now and still MacKeeper free. I still work about Viruses but am not convinced MacKeeper helps with that.

'nuff said

Full article

http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/01/21/64695.htm Quoted below

"CHICAGO (CN) - A class action claims ZeoBIT defrauds customers by saying its MacKeeper software can spot performance problems on Mac computers, but labels every computer as "at risk" and in need of repair.

Lead plaintiff Gregory Ward sued ZeoBIT, a California LLC, in Cook County Chancery Court.

"ZeoBIT develops software that it claims will increase the speed, performance, and stability of a consumer's Macintosh personal computer by removing harmful errors, and eliminating privacy and security threats," the complaint states.

"Unfortunately, as described more fully herein, ZeoBIT uses a common deceptive scheme to trick consumers into purchasing its MacKeeper software, which ultimately fails to deliver the utility ZeoBIT promises."

I use the speedtest.net site as well as their ios app and noticed that, if you have adblock turned off, they have ads for MacKeeper prominently displayed.

I wrote them to let them know about the product they are getting ad dollars from (I assume) and linked to this discussion and they replied:

"Unfortunately, there seems to be confusion between MacKeeper (a legit app) and MacDefender (the Mac malware purporting to be anti-virus that caused issues).

The application advertised on Speedtest.net is legitimate, and you can find more information on Zeobit's website: http://zeobit.com/

http://www.cultofmac.com/170522/is-mackeeper-really-a-scam/

Thank you for your concern and patience.

Best Regards,
Speedtest.net Support"

So I told them there is no confusion at all and sent them the courtnews link you provided. We'll see how they reply to that. 😉