It’s High Time to Remove the Mac Cleanup Pro PUP: Pro Tips
The myth about immutability of Mac users to viruses and malicious software was busted long ago, leaving us with a long list of malware threats and viruses potentially affecting Mac computers as well. One of such malicious threats is the Mac Cleanup Pro, a potentially unwanted program (PUP) masking itself as a good-meaning Mac cleaner. Let’s clarify why it may be dangerous for your gadget and set guidelines for effective and quick Mac Cleanup Pro removal. Stay tuned to get a step-by-step guide for cleaning your device really well.
What is a Mac Cleanup Pro?
Though pretending to be a security alert about a potential infection of your Mac with a virus, Mac Cleanup Pro itself is a piece of malware attempting to find its way into your iOS. It usually surfaces during your online browsing sessions, issuing an alert from dubious websites (one of the examples is lp.superutils.co) that your Mac might be infected.
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The alert looks serious at a first glance, displaying the OS version, IP, and country of the attacker and offering you a quick step-by-step instruction for removing the viruses. The first step that the alert urges you to take is downloading the Mac Cleanup Pro software to your device. In case you follow the guide and install the cleaner, it scans your system super-fast (usually for 3-4 seconds) and issues a scary report enumerating hundreds of detected viruses. How to get rid of them? Sure, Mac Cleanup Pro offers a comprehensive virus removal for a modest fee.
In case you don’t want to pay for the service and want to close it – surprise, you can’t! The PUP just blocks your activities by popping up in the middle of your screen and not allowing you to do anything else until you purchase the pro version.
Is It Dangerous?
As you can see, the Mac Cleanup Pro program is nothing but scareware. In fact, it does no virus scanning or removal. It only intimidates the Mac users with fake virus scan reports and urges them to pay money for a non-existent service.
The PUP cracks the Safari browser and sends the users to fake support pages, which continue scaring them and saying that the computer is seriously infected by viruses. Some of its features may also cause temporary connectivity disruptions by infecting the files responsible for wireless and LAN connections.
Second, it is vital to take into account that the PUP installation pages to which the users get redirected are usually launched by PUAs (potentially unwanted applications) already inhabiting their Macs. Thus, the fact that you landed on the Mac Cleanup Pro page should raise suspicions about the real infection of your computer with some malicious add-ons to the browser or some other malware types that should be removed.
How to Get Rid of It?
With the notifications of Mac Cleanup Pro getting irritating, users will quickly want to get rid of the malicious software on their Macs. Luckily, this can be done in record time, either manually or with the help of specialized virus removal programs (real ones).
The manual removal process takes place as follows:
- Press the Command-Option-Esc hotkey combination (if you have one set up on your computer) to force quit the program (another way of doing this is “Utilities” – “Activity Monitor” – “Mac Cleanup pro” – “Quit Process”).
- Go to the list of programs on your Mac to initiate the manual removal process.
- Complete a Mac scan for viruses with a reliable, legit antivirus program to make sure that all the pieces of Mac Cleanup Pro have been removed from the system. You can also search for all its remnants manually in the “LaunchAgents” directory. They usually hide under the names like MCP or TechSignalSearch.
Another way of uninstalling the Mac Cleanup Pro is the automated one. There are many antivirus scanning tools for full malware removal scanning the system and cleaning it from the scareware.
Here are the ways of removing Mac Cleanup Pro from your Mac. All computers contain much sensitive personal and payment information. Thus, to keep your assets and data secure, exercise caution during Internet browsing and always double-check the reputation and reviews of software you’re downloading.
