“Reader Michael Downend is having difficulty ridding his Mac of a utility he no longer desires,” Christopher Breen reports for Macworld. “He writes: ‘How do I get rid of MacKeeper?'”
“I won’t go into why you’d want to. Some people have found MacKeeper useful, others not,” Breen reports. “But many people I’ve encountered are confused about how to delete it.”
Breen reports, “Versions of MacKeeper made in the last couple of years are actually pretty easy to uninstall, but the process isn’t entirely straightforward.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacKeeper is a virus
Their advertising is a virus
Someone needs to come up with a program that will block anything that says MacKeeper on a computer.
I’m in total agreement. MacKeeper will go down in history as the Mac’s very first scamware, a disease long well known over in the Windows cesspool.
I was involved both at MacUpdate and VersionTracker (before CNET destroyed it) in documenting and exposing ZeoBIT (the original owners of MacKeeper) for STUFFING faked & coerced 4 and 5 star ratings en masse. It felt like a war. MacKeeper has since changed ownership and the ratings fraud has ended. But the same old SCAM weasel scam methods are used to lure people into installing their crapware.
Just say NO! to MacKeeper! Report any websites that DUMP you at MacKeeper’s spider lair. (USe WOT, Web of Trust, etc). If you get screwed and install the thing, come back to the ‘here’ link in this article to learn how to cleanse your Mac’s soul and rejuvenate its virginity. 😉
CNET is nothing but a crapware emporium. About a year ago, I made the mistake of downloading what I thought was a really good Windows utility for checking the sizes of files and folders, something like Omni Disksweeper for Mac. Big mistake. I got a bunch of crapware that came along for the ride. I spent almost an hour getting rid of it. Never again! I blacklisted CNET right then, and I warn all of my Windows using customers to stay away.
If you use Firefox as your browser, you can get URL blocking add-ins. After you add them you can keep blocking their addresses till you you stop getting them.
If you know how to edit the hosts file (/etc/hosts), just add these two lines:
127.0.0.1 mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1 zeobit.com
Doing it that way, I still get a window which might pop up to try to get me to install MacKreeper, but it ends up not finding the domain or loading the web page… I still know which website gave me the pop-open window, so I can complain.
Death to MacKreeper!
Done. Nice tip.
Yeah, if you want a virus to rule over your computer you might as well get a Windows machine…..
This is the first time I’ve heard anyone discuss MacKeeper as if it could be useful, instead of just being some virus or spyware shit.
It looks like MacKeeper claims to do something legitimate, just to make it technically not a virus, so that companies like Apple or antivirus companies can’t just block it outright. (Gator/Claria is an old example of this technically-not-a-virus type of shitware scam.)
Anyway, I’m staying far away from MacKeeper. If it gets close too close, kill it with fire.
Total virus, malware, crapware etc. They lie and create many fake review sites.
One of my clients bought and installed it 2 or 3 years ago. Took me quite a while to delete all of it.
Never had problems until that was installed.
I think AdwareMedic cleans MK off your computer. I haven’t tried it on a MK-infected computer though.
Fortunately, I’ve never trusted or installed their shit. No uninstall issues here.
I can second AdwareMedic. I’ve had to use it on 2 computers recently and it worked like a charm.
Previously I had been able to manually find everything and delete it, but not recently. They’ve made it harder. Even AppCleaner could not find all the files when I deleted it.
Just use AdwareMedic to save you some time.
Put it in the trash. Restart then empty the trash and it will ask you if you want to delete it and why. And you respond because it’s malware.
MacKeeper is crapware. It definitely qualifies as malware too. It’s not needed. If Mac users simply learn how to keep their Macs clean, they won’t need crap like this. How hard is it to clear your cookies, run a permissions repair, or empty your trash? If you do some research, you’ll find out how to clear cache files all by yourself. I’m an Apple consultant, and I make money by providing tech support to Mac using businesses. That said, I don’t mind teaching people how to do the basic stuff so that I can concentrate on maintaining servers, networks, and handling the really bad stuff.
Awesome thans Howie. i am a mac user and a novice so i dont even know how I got mackeeper on my mac.
can you tell me how to get rid of it? And how to empty my cache files?