What is MacKeeper Anyway?

[netart]

Hey y'all, first time long time.

I'm writing an article about shared spaces on the web, covering icons and symbols that are often seen but rarely discussed. I want to talk about the dreaded MacKeeper ads and how weird and creepy they are. I'm covering MacKeeper's choice to advertise with the pop-under technique in vulnerable areas of the web. Many online users are afraid of MacKeeper because they often see the advertisements when browsing questionable sites, which, it seems, creates a sense of fear within the user.

This in and of itself might be the reason why people relate MacKeeper to a virus; malware posing as an anti-virus program. Since other pop-under advertisements that are often seen along side the MacKeeper ads are more obviously spam, the MacKeeper ads are cognitively associated with a negative user experience.

Does anyone have any experience with MacKeeper, whether it be actually downloading it or it "downloading itself" (which some people have said on some forums)? What exactly is MacKeeper: actual spam/malware or just a poorly designed program? Why do you think MacKeeper has such a bad reputation online, and why does it seems to keep pushing itself when it's obviously negatively viewed (their marketing seems broke, shouldn't they fix it)?

I am also interested in the design aesthetic of their robot logo. What connotations come to mind when viewing their logo? For me, the sight of a buff bot just perpetuates their stigma as spam. What does this robot remind you of?

I'm just trying to get some feedback from Mac users. Hope to hear yr responses.

 

[s15119]

I've never downloaded it. I despise it's advertising practices.

Lot's of info and opinions on this thread,


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4276731

 

[firedept]

Here is a link to a great article by The Safe Mac about MacKeeper. Pretty clear about the antics used by the owners of the software and how they market it and pretend to market it.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

From what i hear it will install files all over the OS and become very hard too find a remove.

 

[Bending Pixels]

It's a waste of money...period

 

[Washac]

I use Adblock Plus in Firefox and see nothing of this softwares pop ups

 

[cjmillsnun]

It has a bad reputation because it is bad software, period.

Add into that shady marketing policies and it being almost impossible to clean off your system and you get the picture. Just avoid like the plague.

 

[MCAsan]

What is MacKeeper Anyway?

A profitable app aimed at Mac newbies that are used to having several 3rd party toolsets for Windows protection and maintenance. When you are used to need Norton 360 and other tools, it is hard to grasp that in OS X....not so much.

 

[old-wiz]

I use Adblock Plus in Firefox and see nothing of this softwares pop ups

Same here and completely forgot the MacKeeper pop-ups and pop-unders. It's very rare to see the ads when you have Adblok plus. If you turn off Adblock plus surfing the web is a nightmare.

 

[GGJstudios]

Does anyone have any experience with MacKeeper, whether it be actually downloading it or it "downloading itself" (which some people have said on some forums)? What exactly is MacKeeper: actual spam/malware or just a poorly designed program? Why do you think MacKeeper has such a bad reputation online, and why does it seems to keep pushing itself when it's obviously negatively viewed (their marketing seems broke, shouldn't they fix it)?

MacKeeper has earned a bad reputation in part by their pervasive and annoying spam advertising methods, and in part because the software itself is, at best, useless, and at worst, potentially damaging to a user's installation. I do have experience in installing and testing MacKeeper, like I have tested many similar apps. It isn't actual malware, but it's very poorly designed and that type of software is unnecessary.

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

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These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

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Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance. OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​