Viruses, warnings, MacKeeper

[evennewerbie]

OK first you are supposed to explain your system: Mac retina early 2015.
OSX Yoshemite 10.10.5.

Should it be?

Before I get to the immediate issue, I am fairly confused about requirements for antivirus protection for Mac . My Beginners' Guide to Mac says nothing about it that I can see. Mind you I am a survival of Guttenberg era, so remain bewildered by books that have no indexes (or indices as we quaintly used to call them).

I had a vague memory of having given permission to some reputable antivirus and looking in Downloads I found a couple of files avg. with against them 'disk image' - whatever that means. They must have been installed? well there somehow at least, October 2015 soon after I bought it. I can't remember them ever having given any signs of life though. Maybe I downloaded it without installing it, would I see it in Applications if it was installed?

Now this morning when I opened the computer I saw a message warning me of a virus. Following a person I was led to, the virus was called Tap Snake and categorised High Risk. which sounds very specific. I was urged and almost ordered to download the app Mac Keeper, For free. OK I know everything says it is free at first-

However this all sounded slightly suspicious to me (because it came up as first thing before I visited any other site, because I have no doubts about sites I've visited recently, because of the peremptoriness, because of the times I meet sites with names that sound like they are official Windows but aren't, so maybe it's the same for Mac) so I googled Mac Keeper and most places seem to be saying keep clear of it.

Well I'm sure you guys have explained all this stuff time and again, so can you refer me to the most succinct and practical guide to what I ought to be doing about my Mac's security? And real, imagined, or suspected tap snakes.?

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,


Your Mac has built in protection so no antivirus software is needed. I would recommend you download and run Malwarebytes for Mac you can download it here.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/antimalware/mac/

I was urged and almost ordered to download the app Mac Keeper

Please never download or install this software.

And regarding this fake Tap Snake have a look here.

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/blogs/tap-snake-infection-not-very-likely/

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

However this all sounded slightly suspicious to me (because it came up as first thing before I visited any other site, because I have no doubts about sites I've visited recently, because of the peremptoriness, because of the times I meet sites with names that sound like they are official Windows but aren't, so maybe it's the same for Mac) so I googled Mac Keeper and most places seem to be saying keep clear of it.

Your instincts are sound in this instance. Never click anything on any web page when you are informed you need to download something or instigate anything because of any type of detected infection. Some websites you may visit to download files have a download button which looks like it's linked to the file you want except you are downloading something totally unwanted such as MacKeeper!

I would suggest you don't operate out of an Admin Acct but create a Standard Acct for your daily use. Also in Safari Prefs > General Tab, disable Open "safe" files etc. In System Prefs > Security & Privacy, click "Require password for sleep & screen saver". While there you can click on the Firewall Tab to turn that on, make sure the padlock down the bottom left of the window is locked when you're done. Then set up a screen saver & set up for your mac to go to sleep after a set time.

Keep your Mac updated through Software Update or the App Store … make sure you use strong passwords.

 

[evennewerbie]

Thank you both.

I have been ignoring Mac keeper, but it hasn't been ignoring me. Not today so far but most days this warning pops up. If I hear from it again, I will have to ask how to get rid of it!

It's not so much my instinct but more my experience with Windows where I had a bit of this unwanted company pretending want to to help me which as far as I know didn't do any actual harm but was always popping up and being a bit of a nuisance and some of it I never managed to get rid of.

I frankly do not really know what 'don't operate out of an Admin Acct but create a Standard Acct for your daily use.' means, but I will try to look it up in my Indexless book. The rest looks like something I can do and I will report later. Thank you.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

I frankly do not really know what 'don't operate out of an Admin Acct but create a Standard Acct for your daily use.' means

• Standard User accounts are for everyday computing.
• Administrator accounts provide the most control over a computer, and should only be used when necessary.
• Guest accounts are intended primarily for people who need temporary use of a computer.

Look in System Preferences ~> Users & Groups to determine how your Mac has been set up re: your account type. If you are Admin it's advisable to create a new Admin Acct, log out of yours & into this new account. Then change your acct from Admin to Standard. Log out of the Admin Acct then back into you acct & you're done.

 

[honestone]

Thank you both.

I have been ignoring Mac keeper, but it hasn't been ignoring me. Not today so far but most days this warning pops up. If I hear from it again, I will have to ask how to get rid of it!

It's not so much my instinct but more my experience with Windows where I had a bit of this unwanted company pretending want to to help me which as far as I know didn't do any actual harm but was always popping up and being a bit of a nuisance and some of it I never managed to get rid of.

For most "OK/legitimate" sites one visits, that MacKeeper BS will not appear. I myself use a free third party browser extension entitled Ghostery (one can get it from here: https://www.ghostery.com/), and it filters out quite a lot of unwanted stuff. Visiting some "nefarious" sites, though, can result in that MacKeeper pop up/another page to appear. One can easily ignore it.

I am not aware of any browser extension/software which will completely stop such crap as MacKeeper from appearing. Shoot, even when visiting some legitimate sites resulted in a pop-up for Ashely Madison (supposedly a site for discrete encounters)!

 

[evennewerbie]

• Standard User accounts are for everyday computing.
• Administrator accounts provide the most control over a computer, and should only be used when necessary.
• Guest accounts are intended primarily for people who need temporary use of a computer.

Look in System Preferences ~> Users & Groups to determine how your Mac has been set up re: your account type. If you are Admin it's advisable to create a new Admin Acct, log out of yours & into this new account. Then change your acct from Admin to Standard. Log out of the Admin Acct then back into you acct & you're done.

Thank you. I have now done that, or think I have, and am using an ordinary user account. It amounts to setting up a new account which serves as administrator, while switching the existing account, by which I understand really all my stuff documents, email, browsing into new standard account which has the same name as the previous account which used to be an administrator account.

I did in fact also find some explanation of the different kinds of accounts on page 22 of Beginners Guide to Mac

This learning will surely be useful – believe it or not in all these years I did not know this. In Windows every so often when there was trouble I had been told that I had to go to this Higher Authority that was The Administrator, which was stultifying as I did not know who he was and where he lived, though I did have some vague suspicion he might be me. I am sure that Aunt Ethel does not know either, and I hope it is useful for what you guys do to know how things appear to people like me and Aunt Ethel. And by the way you often don't seem to find this useful stuff in For Dummies books which seem to tell you everything you already know nothing else that you need to know. I guess why there are these different grades of account belongs to computer science, with which we need have no concern.

Question: this change of account immediately, at least for now, resolved a problem which was getting annoying and I was going to ask about. I was continually losing my Wi-Fi connection,while browsing etc. Trying to load, or write on or work on a loaded site I would much too often be told that there was No Connection. At the same time when I looked in the system preferences wi-Fi it would eill me that I am connected,naming IP address et cetera. I could often, at least for a time, correct this by switching Wi-Fi off and then back on again. When it got worse I would just restart the computer. The problem was with the Mac not my Wi-Fi because I was not seeing it with another device. And the modem adsl is just 2 m away. Since I changed accounts I no longer have this problem. Is there something here I need to understand?

 

[evennewerbie]

Hi,


Your Mac has built in protection so no antivirus software is needed. I would recommend you download and run Malwarebytes for Mac you can download it here.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/antimalware/mac/



Please never download or install this software.

And regarding this fake Tap Snake have a look here.

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/blogs/tap-snake-infection-not-very-likely/

Thank you, that is helpful and reassuring.
I looked in my downloads I saw that I had downloaded Malwarebytes last year, I must have heard something, ..but never installed or used it. But I did so now, and it didn't find anything. However this spurious virus warning is no longer popping up.

 

[evennewerbie]

For most "OK/legitimate" sites one visits, that MacKeeper BS will not appear. I myself use a free third party browser extension entitled Ghostery (one can get it from here: https://www.ghostery.com/), and it filters out quite a lot of unwanted stuff. Visiting some "nefarious" sites, though, can result in that MacKeeper pop up/another page to appear. One can easily ignore it.

I am not aware of any browser extension/software which will completely stop such crap as MacKeeper from appearing. Shoot, even when visiting some legitimate sites resulted in a pop-up for Ashely Madison (supposedly a site for discrete encounters)!

"third party browser extension" - is that the same thing as a proxy site?

I plead innocent and swear I have not been visiting any naughty nefarious sites - honest.

I only do that on my other computer.

 

[honestone]

"third party browser extension" - is that the same thing as a proxy site?

No, it is an actual piecer of software that gets installed and is used as part of your browser.