Mac auto fixer & mackeeper scaring me about buying protection for my Mac. it this necessary or just phishing???
Are Mac Auto Fixer and MacKeeper necessary to clean my Mac? Or just phishing?
Mac Pro
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The folks behind MacKeeper from a while back ended up paying out two million dollars after a lawsuit. It’s one of the more contentious pieces of software around, too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacKeeper
Much like advertising and propaganda and politics—and we’re all being deluged—fear can cloud our judgement, and can lead to bad decision. Fear sells.
In general, add-on anti-malware has a very long history of not living up to its claims, and of causing corruptions, crashes, instabilities and performance degradation. About a third of the security flaws in US Governement comoutermsystems were flaws in the security software, in one of the recent surveys.
The problems that most folks have with Mac, they generally get by installing the problem for themselves. Either sketchy software, or cracked software, or downloads from random sites and not related to the vendors, or free free free free free free coupons save save save stuff!
No, you don’t need add-ons with macOS. The in-built Gatekeeper and Xprotect do well, and there’s very little dreck around—other than what messes folks install themselves, that is.
You do need current and consistent and automated backups, preferably with backup copies occasionally kept off-site. Disk encryption. Good and unique passwords—recent Safari can flag password re-use. Two-factor authentication on your Apple ID, and other critical accounts. Don’t install anything you didn’t go looking for, and only install from the vendor’s own site, or the Mac App Store.
But as for easy fixes for scary scary scariness?
There aren’t any of those.
There’s just diligence.
