Has anyone done the interactive 'cleaning' that comes after contacting MacKeeper? If so, has anything unusual happened afterward? Do I have any reason to not trust them?
MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
Several hundred people have screwed up their OS X with that. You'll find the complaints all over the net.
It deletes things you don't want to delete and after that it's VERY HARD to figure out what it did. So, many people end up reinstalling OS X.
OS X isn't Windows.... there's no reason for "cleaning" software.
If you have issues slowing down your Mac, why not spell those out and allow folks here to help you do Actual Troubleshooting.
prescottpeter wrote:
... Do I have any reason to not trust them?
Yes, you have every reason not to trust it, or any other magical cure-all. Those scams are extremely popular.
Removing MacKeeper is very simple. If you need help doing that, write back for instructions with screenshots.
Undoing the effects of actually having used MacKeeper is another matter altogether, and requires a different recovery procedure.
You don't want it, and you don't need it. I have been using Macintosh since 1984, purchased over 100 Macs. Never seen a virus or any reason to do any "cleaning".
Yes. I have been called in to help fix a number of Mac where someone used MacKeeper on them. MacKeeper broke the operating system but deleting parts of it which cause it to be inoperable afterwards.
DO NOT USE ANY SO CALLED APPS CLAIMING TO "CLEAN", "OPTIMIZE" OR "SPEED UP" YOUR MAC!!!! EVER!!!!
Apps like MacKeeper, MacSweeper or any other maintenance apps like CleanMyMac 1 or 2, TuneUpMyMac, SpeedUpMyMac, MacCleanse or anything like these apps, installed on your Mac, while they appear to be helpful, can do too good a job of data "cleanup" causing the potential to do serious data corruption or data deletion and render a perfectly running OS completely dead and useless leaving you with a frozen, non-functional Mac.
Plus, these type of apps aren't really necessary OR needed. They really aren't.
There are manual methods to clear off unnecessary data off of your Mac that are safer and you have complete control over your Mac and not just leave a piece of auto cleaning software in charge of clearing off data off of your Mac. Their potential of causing OS X issues outweighs the implied good and benefits these types of hard drive or memory "cleaning" apps are written to do.
These types of system 'cleaning" apps are very poorly written and are really a scam to rob newbieand novice Mac users of their hard earned cash for a poorly written maintenance program that will do much more harm to a perfectly normal running OS X system than the good that the app developers purport these types of apps will do.
Plus, the software companies that write these apps make it hard to easily uninstall these apps if something DOES go wrong and these apps work in a way where you have no recovery or revert function to return your Mac back to its former, working state in the event something does go wrong.
It is best to never, EVER download and install these types of apps.
The risk to your system and important data is too great a risk!
Thank you for your thoughtful reply John. I'm concerned about removal, and I'm willing to go the extra ... whatever ... to remove MacKeeper properly. You mention having actually used the MacKeeper - I allowed it to 'clean' my system, but have done nothing else. The nearest Apple store is a two hour drive, so anything I could do at home would be much appreciated.
The Apple Store's corrective action, if they were to take any, would be to erase your Mac, reinstall its operating system, and declare it fixed. You can certainly do that yourself.
One recovery procedure follows. Other procedures exist, but this one is likely to require the least amount of your time and interaction. It is exactly what I do with similarly affected systems, it is what an Apple Store would recommend, and it has the advantage of being completely supported by Apple's support documentation.
To erase and install Mavericks read: OS X Mavericks: Erase and reinstall OS X
To migrate your essential documents read: OS X: How to migrate data from another Mac using Mavericks and follow the procedure under Time Machine or other disk migration.
prescottpeter wrote:
Has anyone done the interactive 'cleaning' that comes after contacting MacKeeper?
You say you're concerned "after contacting MacKeeper" - that wording concerns me. Did you get some kind of a pop-up in your web browser with a phone number to call, telling you that something is wrong with your system, and when you called them, you gave them remote access to your system and they installed MacKeeper? If so, you have been scammed and your computer is now compromised. You will need to erase the hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch, or restore from a backup made prior to that event.
If you actually called MacKeeper's tech support line, you're probably okay, but MacKeeper is a borderline scam itself. I'd call it a scam, but it doesn't meet the legal requirements (mostly because the legal system has no clue about the complete lack of technical merit to MacKeeper's claims), so the authorities can't go arrest the folks behind MacKeeper. I don't trust those folks at all, and have seen them do many VERY unethical things, but I've never seen any signs that MacKeeper will make malicious changes to your system. It's certainly unnecessary, and may screw up your system, and thus should be removed. See the other posts here about how to do that.
Thank you, I will follow the advice on how to remove whatever is in my computer delicately...
Does anyone have experience with MacKeeper?
