Remove Hotspot shield

Maybe this will help.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4300072?answerId=20074946022#20074946022

Hotspot shield is scam spyware, and Apple should do something about it.

The company uses it to mine data for Anchor Free, their ad data company. This is why they make it incredibly difficult to get rid of, and outright lie on their website about to uninstall it.

To stop it running, go to your applications folder, and start the Activity Monitor.

Click on the Memory tab

Find Hotspot Shield in the list of running processes, and click on it.

Then click the X button above the list of processes.

This will stop it, so now you can move Hotspot Shield to the trash.

BUT!

This will not get rid of it, in spite of the fact that their website says it uninstalls it completely. I know this because I am still getting their banner ads in my browser, which tell me they won't go away until I give them money.

I've found advice online to start trawling for kext files, but I don't want to go messing with stuff at the kernel level without knowing exactly what I'm doing.

I'd appreciate in-depth help from someone at Apple, since this is clearly a common problem on the forums.

Hey Sun Queen,

Unsure if you're still having the issue but I thought I'd let you know what I've done.

I was searching for a good VPN and found hotspot shield and, as we now know, it's garbage. So here's what you can do.

1. Click Finder hold the Option key and click Go (in the top taskbar) then Library (library only shows if you hold option).
2. Go to the "Preferences" folder
3. You should see "com.anchorfree.Hotspot_Shield.plist" or something to that effect. Drag that to the trash (it may prompt you for an administrator password.
4. Log out of your user account and log back in.

That should take care of the ads. But, for good measure, lets make sure everything's gone.

1. Click the Apple in the top left and go to System Preferences.
2. Click Users & Groups
3. On the right you should see a small square picture and then "Login Items"
4. Click HotSpot Shield and click the "-" button in the bottom left.

1. Next (and this one gets pretty intense, so stick with me here)
2. Click Finder and go to the "Go" drop-down menu again
3. Click "Go to folder" and input this without quotes "/Library/Application Support"
4. Delete the "HotSpot Shield" folder
5. Go to the "Go to Folder" again and input this "/Library/LaunchDaemons" and delete "com.anchorfree..."
6. Reboot
   

That should be it! Now your computer is completely free of that garbage!

If you need any help, let me know, or take it to your nearest Apple Store to talk to a Genius, they can help you out. Make sure you go to support.apple.com to make a reservation!

Thank you Sun Queen for starting this thread and thank you ElRojito for the detailed and effective solution!

It did work, parcially; I had to force delelte the deleted items to finish the process; here's how to do it:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57600785-263/force-empty-that-stubborn-tras h-bin-in-os-x/

And now your mac is Anchorfree free. Enjoy 🙂

Cheers

Excellent instructions! I had the same problem but I followed your instructions and now its GONE!!! Thanks you so much!

I tried all this and I'm still getting the ads as well as the payment wall every time I try to go into certain pages! I cant even find the icon in my programs to disable how I used to (when I was just "living with it"). What should I do?? Help!

****UPDATE***

I guess it took a couple of rebootings before it took place! It's gone now it seems... hope I dont have to see that again... 🙂

Thanks ElRojito - your steps helped me.

The only thing that I would add is that for me I followed your steps and logged out and even rebooted several times and still when I'd connect to an insecure network HotSpot Shield warning would pop-up it would not go away. This despite your steps as well as the worthless claim from Anchor Free to simply move the app to trash. For me I found I to completely empty my trash and for good measure trashed the dmg that was sitting in my downloads folder as well. Once I emptied trash and rebooted, now HSS seems to be gone... I hope... all i know is it has not popped up when I go to an non-secured network, so I assume it is gone.

Thanks ELRojito for your detailed instructions. I finally got rid of it. I appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

Great response, ElRojito!!!

If you're interested in doing what ElRojito said to do but having it all done for you automatically rather than doing it manually, I would suggest AppZapper (http://www.appzapper.com/). I've been using AppZapper for uninstalling Mac apps for a while now, and it works perfectly.

El Rojito,

You rock with that answer!! Thank you.

John

Thanks ElRojito!!

Thank you so much; your instructions were easily followed, and solved what was a continuing problem.

Thanks a lot!! El Rojito!!!