2015.05 MacKeeper in Hot Water

From our friends at Small Dog Electronics' blog/newsletter Tech Tails.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer piece of bloatware, in my opinion...

Every Mac user has at one point run across the program known as MacKeeper, a program that is advertised as a tool to keep your Mac clean and fast. Well, as it turns out, MacKeeper has been accused of using scare techniques to get you to buy their higher end apps. MacKeeper was released in 2010 by a company called ZeoBIT from Kiev, Ukraine and was extremely lucrative for ZeoBIT. According to them, as many as 650,000 users purchased the high end versions at the rate of $39.95 per copy in the US alone.

In May of 2014 a lawsuit was filed on behalf of a Pennsylvania resident who claimed that the software falsely came back with exaggerated results to scare the user into buying the paid version. Under the settlement terms ZeoBIT has to pay 2 million dollars into a fund set up for those who feel that they deserve a refund.

To complicate matters, ZeoBIT sold the software to a company called Kromtech in December of 2013. This has, in my opinion, made matters worse as MacKeeper has now transitioned to a subscription-based product, which oddly does not offer updates (unless you pay premium prices). The lawsuit, however, doesn’t include the new owners.

So the future of one of the most hated bloatware is still in the air. For those who have installed it, here is how you get rid of it.