“Kromtech is a highly energized and dynamic company with a new, clear purpose. We are committed to disrupting the traditional consumer cybersecurity market that has seen cybercrime escalate to epidemic proportions, costing the world over $600B. MacKeeper has been described by various sources as highly invasive malware. that can de-stablize your. (Please note that references to the original developers, Zeobit, also now refer to Kromtech Alliance Corp, who acquired MacKeeper and PCKeeper from ZeoBit LLC in early 2013.) Most positive reviews of it have been found to. If you've had a Mac for a while, there's a good chance you've come across an ad for a software called Mackeeper. It's a Cleaning utility originally developed by Zeobit LLC which was acquired by Kromtech Alliance Corp, a German-based IT investment and development company, in 2015.
I recently provided instructions for removing the MacKeeper app from your Mac, along with its component parts. But for some, that’s only a piece of the puzzle. This question is typical of the follow-up email:
Kromtech Mackeeper Scam
But how do I stop MacKeeper notifications from popping up in the Safari and Chrome browsers and asking me to install it?
The first thing I’d suggest you do is remove any MacKeeper-related cookies in your browser. In Safari this means opening Safari’s preferences, clicking the Privacy tab, and then clicking the Manage Website Data button. Search for mackeeper in the sheet that appears and there’s a good chance you’ll find a cookie for mackeeper.com. Select it and click the Remove button. Vow to never visit the site again.
In Chrome, open its preferences and in the Settings window click the “Show advanced settings” link. In the Privacy area click the Content Settings button and in the window that appears click the All Cookies and Site Data button. Use the search field in the resulting window to look for mackeeper. Click Remove All.
Is Mackeeper Legit
My hope is that clearing these cookies will take care of the problem. If it doesn’t, it’s time to employ stronger measures. The first would be to download and run Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware for Mac. It will scan your Mac, seeking out adware that may be causing your problem.
Still no good? On to an ad blocker.
There are a load of these things out there and some are more refined than others. One variety will provide you with no controls whatsoever and block just about anything that smells like an ad—banners, pop-ups, videos, and so on. The problem with some of these is that they can take out good content as well as bad. Also, when employing such broad strokes, they block the less intrusive ads that help websites stay in business.
I would suggest, instead, that you use an ad blocker that goes after the really intrusive stuff—the pop-up ads and autoplay videos—and leaves “reasonable” ads in place. This way you help support sites you enjoy while, at the same time, filtering out the elements that may prevent you from ever visiting the site again. Adblock Plus has made efforts on this front and leaves “acceptable” ads in place by default.
In the course of my research I’ve seen recent posts from someone claiming to work with MacKeeper. This person says that the pop-up ads are from an old adverting campaign and will not be continued. Considering that it’s been a while since this claim was made, it’s best to take matters into your own hands and do what you can from stopping the pop-ups.
This article originally posted on Dec. 22, 2014. It was updated to reflect new software, links, and instructions.
Does Mackeeper Really Work
Have a question of your own? Drop a line to mac911@macworld.com.
On Sunday, white-hat hacker Chris Vickery announced on Reddit that he was able to access “13 million sensitive account details” on MacKeeper. MacKeeper is owned by Kromtech, who brought it from the original developer Zeobit.
Mackeeper Software
According to Vickery (who goes by the screen name FoundTheStuff) on Reddit, “The data was/is publicly available. No exploits or vulnerabilities involved. [Zeobit and Kromtech] published it to the open web with no attempt at protection.” Vickery found the vulnerability by doing a random “port:27017” search on Shodan.io.
Since his initial post on Reddit, Vickery has been in contact with the MacKeeper developers. Kromtech told Vickery that they have secured their databases. A post on the MacKeeper website states that the company “will continue to take every possible step to protect the data of our customers from the evolving cyber threats that companies both large and small face on a daily basis.” The statement also said that since MacKeeper uses a third-party merchant, customer credit card and payment information was “never at risk.”
MacKeeper is a Mac maintenance utility that has been scrutinized for its aggressive pop-up advertising on the web and the shady behavior by the company to promote the product. Users doubt the actual usefulness of the software and thousands were involved in a class-action lawsuit.
This isn’t the first time MacKeeper has been in the news for a security issue. In May, a hole in the software could let attackers execute malicious commands on Macs when their owners visit specially crafted Web pages. That vulnerability was fixed with a software update.
MacKeeper can be a difficult app to uninstall, and how to remove MacKeeper is one of the most popular questions received by Macworld.