The Inaccessible 'com.apple.ap.adprivacyd'

[YanAndrew]

Hello Everybody,

I have just completed a clean reinstallation of my MacBook Pro to Catalina (coz the Big Sur upgrade was going too slowly for me), and my cleaning software flagged the following error message:

/Users/yanandrew/Library/Caches/com.apple.ap.adprivacyd: “com.apple.ap.adprivacyd” couldn’t be removed because you don’t have permission to access it.

So I looked up this 'com.apple.ap.adprivacyd' in the Cache folder:



I do not know what this com.apple.ap.adprivacyd that I have no permission to access is about, but I am certainly not comfortable with it.

Does anyone have any idea or information about it and more importantly, why am I not allowed to access it on my machine? Should I be concerned about it?

 

[harryb2448]

Related to Clean My Nac which is not recommended here. Have a read of this from Apple Discussions. make sure All Replies is clicked.

Files can't be removed in CleanMyMac Scan… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[YanAndrew]

Thank you for sharing that @harryb2448

I do find it strange that CleanMyMac though not recommended for Macs somehow it is available on the Mac App Store, don't you?

What about MacCleanse (https://www.koingosw.com/products/maccleanse/)? Is it equally harmful I wonder.

I have another question about Macs and SSD: Is shredding free space in a SSD recommended because the file shredder software I have suggested to just move files to Trash, empty Trash and then shred free space in the internal SSD. Is it safe to do exactly that?

 

[MacInWin]

SSD's have a limited life based on the number of writes to the individual memory cells. Every write ticks the counter up one toward that eventual one where the cell dies. So the best handling of SSD is it not waste writes that you really don't need to do. That means no defragging, no safe erasing, no "shred free space" (Whatever that actually means.) Just empty the Trash. Done.

As for CMM being in the Mac App Store, there are a lot of things there that are not really of any value nor recommended. Apple just checks to see that apps 1) don't harm the Mac, 2) don't violate their store policies. Nothing about being useful or good.

 

[IWT]

@Andrew,

The harmful apps are not always harmful in themselves, but they encourage people to go to extreme lengths to “cleanse“ their Macs and in doing so, they cause untold harm.

Macs are nowadays only susceptible to Malware and Ransomware and Apple goes to great lengths to mitigate this. But it happens and we tend to recommend Intego Virus Barrier from the App Store or DirectSwift X from its website to deal with this.

As regards “shredding free space”, that’s a recipe for disaster. Do not attempt to defragment a SSD or use any app that promises to shred free space or similar.

Ian

 

[IWT]

Oops. I see Jake has got in before me. Slow typist!!

Ian

 

[MacInWin]

And to get back to the original question, it appears to be a daemon to prevent excessive tracking of you by adware as you browse. It apparently can be disabled through some Terminal commands, but the payback is you get tracked by advertisers everywhere you go forever.

 

[chscag]

@Andrew:

Apple SSDs have TRIM enabled by default. That's the garbage collector for your SSD, therefore there is no need to shred anything unless you enjoy paying for a new logic board to replace the SSD.

 

[YanAndrew]

Thank you Everybody for your inputs. Really appreciate them.

 

[Brian1230]

From what I have heard on this forum is... never do anything to defrag or optimize the ssd drive, the Mac operating system takes care of that for you unlike in windows. That is the key to long ssd life.

 

[chscag]

From what I have heard on this forum is... never do anything to defrag or optimize the ssd drive, the Mac operating system takes care of that for you unlike in windows. That is the key to long ssd life.

The warning is just as valid if you're using Windows. All file systems are susceptible to fragmentation especially as drive space begins to run low. All modern solid state drives used both by Apple and other computer manufacturers have built in garbage cleanup.

 

[MacInWin]

Plus, fragmentation is only an issue because it slows down reads and writes to the drive, slowing the whole machine down as the mechanical heads need to fly all over the discs to do the reading and writing. But an SSD is so fast, the few microseconds it takes to do the reads and writes don't have the same impact, so fragmentation isn't an issue.