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How to remove Mac App Store update to a Application I don't own?

Hey everybody,


So I'm having troubles removing an update from my Mac App Store for Angry Birds. I have never purchased Angry Birds for my computer.

When I click on the update it shows an Apple ID I have never seen before. Definitely not one I own or someone I know.


How can I remove this app from my store, it's not a major issue but it keeps popping up a window telling me I have updates available.


I'm running OSX 10.8


Thanks in advance for your advice.

Posted on Sep 16, 2012 4:25 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Sep 16, 2012 10:27 PM

The Apple Support Communities are an international user to user technical support forum. As a man from Mexico, Spanish is my native tongue. I do not speak English very well, however, I do write in English with the aid of the Mac OS X spelling and grammar checks. I also live in a culture perhaps very very different from your own. When offering advice in the ASC, my comments are not meant to be anything more than helpful and certainly not to be taken as insults.


Those are the classic symptoms that you have a pirated Mac App Store app on your Mac.

Finding a pirated app -

When a stranger's Apple ID appears on your Mac in conjunction with an update for an app that you have never installed, you have a pirated app on your Mac. This pirated app has been cracked with the MAS receipt from the Angry Birds app acquired by the person whose Apple ID you see.


You may not have realized that it was a pirated app when you installed it. You may have believed that it was a trail version or a "free" version.


All MAS apps have a MAS receipt in their app bundle. Check any app acquired from the MAS. Right click on the app's icon in your Apps folder and choose Show package contents. In the Contents folder is a _MASReceipt folder and in that folder is the coded MAS receipt. It has the Apple ID of the MAS account that bought/acquired the app from the MAS. It is that receipt that the MAS uses to alert you that an app has an update. There would not be a notice of an update with someone else's Apple ID showing in the MAS on your Mac, if there was not an app with a receipt from this person's account somewhere on your Mac.


Download the free app FindAnyFile (FAF);

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/


This app is easier to use and seems to be more powerful than Spotlight. Open FAF and in the box type _MASReceipt and press Find. It should come up with a list of every app on the Mac with a MAS receipt. Compare the apps with receipts in FAF's list with your purchased apps list in the Mac App Store. The odd app out should be the pirated app.

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Sep 16, 2012 10:27 PM in response to AaronLeigh123

The Apple Support Communities are an international user to user technical support forum. As a man from Mexico, Spanish is my native tongue. I do not speak English very well, however, I do write in English with the aid of the Mac OS X spelling and grammar checks. I also live in a culture perhaps very very different from your own. When offering advice in the ASC, my comments are not meant to be anything more than helpful and certainly not to be taken as insults.


Those are the classic symptoms that you have a pirated Mac App Store app on your Mac.

Finding a pirated app -

When a stranger's Apple ID appears on your Mac in conjunction with an update for an app that you have never installed, you have a pirated app on your Mac. This pirated app has been cracked with the MAS receipt from the Angry Birds app acquired by the person whose Apple ID you see.


You may not have realized that it was a pirated app when you installed it. You may have believed that it was a trail version or a "free" version.


All MAS apps have a MAS receipt in their app bundle. Check any app acquired from the MAS. Right click on the app's icon in your Apps folder and choose Show package contents. In the Contents folder is a _MASReceipt folder and in that folder is the coded MAS receipt. It has the Apple ID of the MAS account that bought/acquired the app from the MAS. It is that receipt that the MAS uses to alert you that an app has an update. There would not be a notice of an update with someone else's Apple ID showing in the MAS on your Mac, if there was not an app with a receipt from this person's account somewhere on your Mac.


Download the free app FindAnyFile (FAF);

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/


This app is easier to use and seems to be more powerful than Spotlight. Open FAF and in the box type _MASReceipt and press Find. It should come up with a list of every app on the Mac with a MAS receipt. Compare the apps with receipts in FAF's list with your purchased apps list in the Mac App Store. The odd app out should be the pirated app.

Sep 19, 2012 3:07 AM in response to Dah•veed

Hey thanks for the response!


So I've done a sweep of my Applications to find out which one is pirated and it would appear that my Final Cut Pro X has the _MASReceipt as listed above...


That's odd because I have purchased this application from Apple for $329 using the Mac App Store.


I downloaded what I thought to be a trial version off the internet before purchasing through Apple.

Would that be how it got there?


What is the best way to remove this?


Thanks again for the help so far.


Aaron

How to remove Mac App Store update to a Application I don't own?

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