#Mackeeper scam or real for mac
#Mackeeper scam or real software

That article is well worth reading for what else it claims about notarization. Then just after Easter this year, Clario/Kromtech announced that version 4.3 of MacKeeper had been “officially notarized” by Apple. Recognising its previous bad name, Clario/Kromtech claimed that it had “canceled the marketing partnerships that resulted in aggressive and annoying promotions” and had transformed MacKeeper. Its blog announced that “Clario, an innovative customer-focused cybersecurity company, has recently acquired the IP and assets of Kromtech, which includes our MacKeeper product”. Then late last year, everything seems to have changed at Kromtech. is also worth reading, and even more damning than its entry on MacKeeper. Wikipedia’s page on MacKeeper’s developer Kromtech Alliance Corp.

#Mackeeper scam or real for mac

He concluded by writing “Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac will detect MacKeeper as PUP.MacKeeper, and will remove the app and all other components.” The app’s developers, by then Kromtech, blamed a “rogue affiliate” which Reed demonstrated was also misleading. In 2016, the Mac security expert Thomas Reed detailed a fake virus scam which had been deployed to trick users into downloading MacKeeper. Then again when a phishing attack was launched against it in June 2015, and following a major security breach in December of the same year. I wrote about it in MacUser volume 30 issue 5 and issue 7, in 2014.

#Mackeeper scam or real software

It had become recognised as belonging to that shadowy category of Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs), a euphemism for software to avoid at all costs. Reviewers and users reported many problems with it, and those who wrote the Q&A sections for major Mac magazines (including me) were bombarded by messages from users wanting to remove it. It had originally been developed by Zeobit, which had been formed only the previous year.īy the release of version 3.0 in 2015, MacKeeper was starting to become notorious. The product goes back almost exactly ten years, to its first beta release on.

A glance at its page in Wikipedia might be illuminating for its damning opinions. If you’ve only recently come to Macs, then the name may mean little or nothing. I never thought that I’d read the words MacKeeper and notarized in the same sentence, let alone in the title of an article here.