MacKeeper

Last evening I did a silly thing. I d/loaded & installed an App without really doing any research on it. Why? Predominantly because I saw it advertised here, prominently on this site, where I have had so much good advice, and pointers to so many valuable Apps.

The App is of course MacKeeper... which I still see advertised here today.

I d/loaded & installed the Trial version (very glad I didn't pay for it!!!) and pretty much got very loud and persistent warning bells clanging in my head from the moment I 1st ran the app. This is an app that touts itself as sort of a "Swiss Army Knife" of all things Mac maintenance... drive cleaner, av, stolen-mac finder... you name it. Yeah, right. I should have known better.

The 1st glance at this app running bought back all the bad memories of old Windoze apps... "buy-me-now" pop-ups, nag-screens, dire warnings of supposed "problems" on the Mac... the whole shooting box all rolled-up into one neat little Mac app.

Within 5 minutes of the installation I was looking for ways to shut the whole **** thing (including all the add-in's) down and get it off my system. A simple drag to the Trash didn't work, despite reboots. I had to manually hunt-out all the add-ins and processes, shut them all down, then
nuke the whole thing with AppZapper before MacKeeper's own uninstall routine kicked-in and I could get it all into the trash for a Secure delete! An internet search revealed several other places I needed to go in root & user libraries to finally rid myself of this pestilential installation.

The uninstall has taken several hours.

Now, this post is not to "blame" MacForums for something I should not have done... it's very much a mea culpa. Rather this post I hope will serve as a warning to other users, particularly in regard this shonky software. I would however be rather grateful if perhaps MacForums administrators were a little more aware of exactly what was being advertised on their site.

Once I had realised the error I had made, it didn't take very long at all to find out just how bad this App is. As I said previously, given that the App was advertised here -a site I trust- my usual caution was somewhat lowered. Others may fall into the same trap. Surely there is some level of filtering/control possible with what Apps are presented to users here, with the intent of providing users with recommendations for solid, reputable Apps rather than these random -possibly malicious- apps?

FWIW, MacKeeper is not malicious. It's not necessarily recommended by most regulars because there are free alternatives that do most of what it does.

It's not really fair though to blame an app because you failed to uninstall it correctly according to its instructions.

So I appreciate the feedback, but in this case, your hostility is not being placed in the right direction.

As I said in the original post schweb, it is definitely a mea culpa. I take full responsibility for my own actions and shortcomings. The software could definitely be perceived as malicious given the way it "takes over" the system with pop-up's, slow downs, false alerts and nagging to "upgrade" to the paid version. I consider anyone that fails to deliver on their promises or causes problems like this software does to be acting maliciously.

FWIW, I did attempt to uninstall following the instructions. That failed. That's why I had to search deeper, where I found many other users had similarly failed following the provided uninstall instructions -where they could be found. Further, any "hostility" I may be displaying is towards those that develop & market products such as this, not toward MF.

The point of the post however, was a plea to MF admins to please be aware of what is being advertised on your site! Don't advertise software like this that may (read: probably will) cause far more problems than it is worth, whilst failing to deliver on any of its promises. Many others like me perceive MF as being a fine, trusted source of information and advice. I hope that future advertising of software/products on the MF site will be for products/software worthy of the (implied) MF endorsement.

Regards

There's something shifty about the company that produced it though. They even have "Social Media Evangelizers" responding to any negative criticism on sites like Macupdate.com.

Sounds like a something iNet should look into. That being said, they probably won't.

For the OP, I'd recommend adding an add blocker for your browser so you don't have to look at that stuff anymore.

Yeah Virgeist, I concur. Everything I have subsequently read about this software and company points to them being the worst kind of shonks.

hmmm... baggss, yeah I could take a "head-in-the-sand" approach and simply pretend they don't exist, but personally I reckon it's better to try (at least) to encourage reputable sites to actively manage the content they allow to be advertised, with their implied endorsement.

I fell into their trap with lowered defences because it was advertised on a site I trust; others may do also. Far better that a shonky product like this just never gets to see the light of day on a reputable site.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll go ahead and close the thread since it's not really needed any further.