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Interestingly, the one thing that the user would have intended to get from this installer - Adobe Flash Player - was somehow not installed. Of course, this installer actually included MacKeeper, as well as some other adware and PUPs:

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There are many such scams out there that involve MacKeeper, such as this one:Ĭlicking the Download Flash button resulted in the download of an installer that claimed to be an Adobe Flash Player installer:

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A website tells the user that their Flash Player is outdated, and offers a download to update it. Case in point, see the following page, which I saw numerous times in the last few days while crawling around in some of the back alleys of the web:Ī similar scam that often tricks users is the fake Adobe Flash Player update scam.

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Unfortunately, it's not very difficult these days to find scam sites claiming that 'Your Mac Might Be Infected!' and offering MacKeeper as the solution. Especially given the previously-documented association with these fake Tapsnake virus scams, which were blamed on 'affiliates.' However, it is interesting that MacKeeper itself is telling me that I need to worry about Tapsnake, to scare me into paying for its anti-virus features. Funny, you'd think we would have heard something about such a large-scale Tapsnake infection, but no. Note that the 'tech' tells me that there's 'a new virus called Tapsnake that has infected many Macs worldwide.' I've had MacKeeper tell me this three times, on three different days and in three different installations of the software. I've run through this test numerous times, on different days, and gotten the same canned responses. (I use the 'quotes' above because I believe that this is actually an automated system in MacKeeper, and not actually a chat. The MacKeeper app uses a 'chat' with a 'MacKeeper tech' during the scan process to sell the product's usefulness, and here's a screenshot of a portion of that chat: However, there's a bit of a problem with that. They blame a rogue affiliate, who is aggressively and inappropriately marketing MacKeeper without their permission. The fact that MacKeeper was being pushed by a fake virus scam is bad, but according to Kromtech, this isn't their doing.

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It was Android malware that was seen back in 2010, which no longer exists and which was never seen on the Mac. there is no such thing as Tapsnake on the Mac. If you don't want to watch the entire video, skip forward to 0:54, where you'll see that the site claims that 'Tapsnake' has been detected, and then proceeds to push MacKeeper as a 'required' download to remove Tapsnake. Last month, we spotted a particularly egregious fake virus scam that attempted to scare the user into downloading MacKeeper: Clark told me they were cracking down on their affiliates.įast forward to 2016, and unfortunately, the story is much the same.

Mike Clark, of ZeoBIT, told me back in 2011 that, “We pay a 50 percent affiliate commission and sometimes our affiliates go wild and have a lapse in judgement with the way Mackeeper is promoted.” At the time, Mr. At that time, I was very active on Apple's forums, and saw many things on the 'front lines.' Over the years, I collected a lot of information about MacKeeper, and wrote an article in 2014 about some fraudulent behaviors involving MacKeeper.Īccording to the MacKeeper folks (first ZeoBIT, now Kromtech), this is behavior that was caused by affiliates. TapSnake.A is difficult to recognize, as it has the appearance of the Snake game, so it does not make users suspect and realize that it also contains a spyware program.MacKeeper first crossed my path more than five years ago. TapSnake.A can be downloaded from the Android Market.

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Additionally, users have to register in order to associate the affected terminal with the GPS Spy software and this way gain access the gathered information. Therefore physical access to the terminal is required. It is necessary that a user (the affected or attacking user) installs the program. TapSnake.A is a Trojan that affects mobile phones with an Android operating system.Īpparently, it is the popular Snake game, but unlike this, TapSnake.A requires geographical information to the GPS of the terminal in order to send the position to a malicious user, as this game is part of the spyware suite called GPS Spy. It seems to be the classic game for phones called the Snake, but besides the game, it installs a spyware program which requires geographical infromation to the GPS of the affected user's phone. It affects mobile phones with an Android operating system.