Not everyone who owns Mac's, or computers in general, are as tech savvy as some of us are. They can easily be duped into buying MacKeeper, thinking they're doing a good thing for themselves.
Ignorant, or lack of knowledge, still, my opinion is that no one deserves to become a victim of identity theft.
Some people coming from disadvantaged situations were never able to develop critical thinking skills. Take, for instance, my grandparents on my mother's side. Their education isn't even high-school level. They grew up extremely poor, had really crappy parents who didn't care much about them, had kids as 16 year olds, lived in a trailer park and worked in factories doing rather unskilled labor. They're good people who work hard and have good values that they instilled in their kids. My mom ended up graduating near the top of her class. But her parents can be pretty clueless at times, especially when it comes to tech stuff. The skills that high school and college afford go way beyond simple education. The critical thinking, analytical research—even basic things like how to learn are all developed during this crucial time in life while transitioning to adulthood.
Which is exactly why you guys should educate them about the pitfalls of mackeeper. Nowhere in the article did you guys mention that mackeeper is malware in itself and readers should stay away. Why is that?
I'm not an editor and have no control over what is published. However, this sentence, in the article, indicates that they also feel the software isn't in the customer's best interest to purchase.
Gotcha. Yeah i did see that but i dont feel that goes far enough. It should have a more blunt advisement that people should not download it as its not legitimate antimalware.
The editorial staff here always welcome input, and you can let them know your thoughts here: https://www.macrumors.com/share.php
Anti-virus company MacKeeper is making headlines today for its lax security on a customer database that contained 13 million customer records complete with names, email addresses, usernames, password hashes, phone numbers, IP address, and system information.
As shared in a reddit post, Chris Vickery (via Forbes) was able to download the records simply by entering an IP address, with no username or password required to access the data, a major security oversight on MacKeeper's part.
MacKeeper was also using MD5 hashes for passwords, a weak algorithm that's easily bypassed using an MD5 cracking tool. As Vickery says, MacKeeper (and parent company Kromtech) "appears to have no respect for the privacy of its users' data or the integrity of their information."
Vickery did not share details on the exploit and immediately contacted Kromtech about the oversight. Using Vickery's information, Kromtech secured the database after several hours, and nobody with malicious intent was reportedly able to get ahold of customer details. With the exploit fixed, Vickery explained how he accessed the data.For those unfamiliar with MacKeeper, it is Mac software that purports to optimize a Mac and keep it secure from viruses and malware, tricking people into a purchase with unrealistic claims. Earlier this month, a class action lawsuit led to a $2 million settlement that will see MacKeeper providing refunds to customers who purchased the software and would like their money back.
Though MacKeeper says Vickery was the only person to access the information, MacKeeper customers should still change their passwords and passwords on sites that used the same password as the MacKeeper password.
Article Link: MacKeeper Exposes Data on 13 Million Customers
Hmmm, 16Gb with the 3.4ghz quad core i7 chipset.
It's possible that clearing those caches slows down your machine. Depends what you're clearing. Whenever I install a major OS X update, my machine runs very slowly for some time, presumably while it's filling caches or something, and then it's fast. Maybe you're undoing that work every time.
