What is Genieo and why did it appeared misteriosouly on my MacBook Pro?

isaacbarrow1 wrote:

if you upgrade (for free) to OSX Mavericks, then it can't affect you!

Sadly, that's not true. It may just be Apple's way of suggesting you get rid of it, but many Mavericks users are still being impacted by it.

My opinion is that if you upgrade (for free) to OSX Mavericks, then it can't affect you!

That's not correct. The version of Genieo you had was so old that it was not compatible with Mavericks, which probably means it's been installed on your machine for quite some time. There are many, many variants of Genieo that will work just fine in Mavericks. For that matter, some components of the variant of Genieo you had may not have been incompatible, and may still be doing their thing in the background.

See the removal instructions here:

http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-genieo/

Can we get a post or a re-post of the the best way to get rid of Genieo from a Mac since just deleting Genieo in the Application Folder (which I did by Applications>Utilities>Activiy Monitor >(stop Genieo and then delete it in the Applications Folder) is insufficient?

Can we get a post or a re-post of the the best way to get rid of Genieo from a Mac

I'm not sure I understand this request, since you have posted it as a response to a post in which I provided a link to removal instructions. Is your question in regard to those instructions, or something else?

I have been doing some research on sites created using Muse. While doing this search I came across many websites that offered free fonts, website templates, brushes, etc and all of them had the Genieo link and huge "download" button. Before going forward I did a search on Genieo and ended up here. Glad that I searched and found that it's a scam. Wish there was a way to warn others. Or, Apple set up a way to not download anything from that site.

Yes I just had a client install this because it was offered with a huge green download button in an ad directly below the legit small blue download link. It was annoying to remove (terminal was smoothest method for me, followng the instructions at http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-genieo/).

The ad on this particular site was served by Google Adwords. I don't know if there's a way to get Google to block or at least complain about this adware advertiser.

We got this deceptive annoying item also. It was hacked into our computer and we feel this was done by my child playing Mine Craft.

I have done a lot of reading and found that a lot of people tell you NOT to use the "remove genieo app" as this only hides it on your computer.

I reset my computer by returning it to its factory settings. It was fully removed, after we checked we re downloaded mind craft and it reappeared.

I have also found that the people who obviously made this annoying application go on these help questions and make people think that it's safe and it is not!

Note that you can also be tricked into downloading it by clicking on "download" buttons in banner ads that appear just above, below, or otherwise near the legit download link on some software sites. Really the software hosting site should BAN deceptive appearing advertisements, but I'm sure these adware companies buy lots of banner ad space.

Corin See wrote:

Note that you can also be tricked into downloading it by clicking on "download" buttons in banner ads that appear just above, below, or otherwise near the legit download link on some software sites.

Please provide a link to one of these sites, thank you.

Genieo (and InstallMac, another name for the same software) is perhaps the most prolific adware at the time of this writing (late 2013). It has been in active distribution for most of the year, with a very active Israeli company behind it.

http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-genieo/

SnowboardBunny wrote:

I run Sophos (free mac antivirus) on mine and it caught this program as a threat and easily cleaned it up in no time. So, if you are spending time cleaning this up, maybe try Sophos.

I have previously used Sophos to test it's ability to do that, but it failed to find several components that are listed in Adware Removal Guide : Genieo. But that was a few months ago, so it may be better now.

There was a new variant of Genieo 2.0 found last week, so there may be additional things to look for.

In response to that:

imabigdog

imabigdog wrote:

I too had Genieo on my iMac running OS X 10.08.3. I use a freeware program named AppCleaner.app, which is a drag and drop delete program that seems to work very well. It will uninstall the main culprit and associated sub files by dragging the unwanted application to a "bullseye" and then hitting the delete button when the files pop up on your screen. No more Genieo on my iMac, took about thirty seconds to delete.

Hi iamabigdog.. I know it's an old one here and not sure you can help at all.. you've mentioned you used appcleaner.app to get rid of the big G. And it worked. I have just done that and also cleaned two other apps associated with Genieo (I remembered their names / icons rather as they poped up yesterday at the same time as G). And sadly my browser is still redirecting to Genieo. Gutted.

My question for you:

Have you completely managed to end it right there with appcleaner

Any other tricks you've learnt since about this super nasty software?

Thanks in advance - others, please give me your opinion if you think it's relevant.

I don't want to go on how ethical or rather unethical Genieo is, I just want to kill it on my machine forever fullstop!

That advise is a year old now and has been proven to be false dozens of times in this conversation and hundreds of times in the Forum.

Genieo 2.0 has been out for about a week now and it has changed the rules once more.

Please use thomas_r.'s updated instructions for complete removal and you'll save yourself a lot of time and trouble.

Adware Removal Guide : Genieo

This is an awful piece of software, for complete removal instructions and support on removing Genieo(InstallMac) visit http://www.fixkb.com/2011/11/remove-genieo-on-mac.html

Regards

Rustycan

(concerned IT guy)

Most of the information in that fixkb.com page is plagiarized directly from my own instructions:

http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-genieo/

Although the page says "Information kindly provided by Thomas Reed," note that I was never asked for permission to copy my content. One of the "authors" of this page also posted a comment that they had been in contact with me, but I can find absolutely no record of any attempted contact by them... and I never delete e-mail! (I have every message I sent or received since 2005).

Ethical questions aside, the fixkb instructions are also outdated, and will not completely remove more recent variants of Genieo.