October 2019 • Macworld 67REVIEWincluding the infamous MacKeeper and Advanced
Mac Cleaner, which, once installed, loads itself
into your Mac’s startup items, informs you of how
many threats it’s noticed, then offers a phone
number to call for 24/7 live tech support.
Upon noticing the malware that was still
left over after rebooting, I switched over to a
free copy of Malwarebytes, which picked up 11
threats during its scan, including questionable
applications such as Advanced Mac Cleaner,
Advanced Mac Tuner, and MacKeeper, and
proceeded to tear them out by the roots.
Even with CleanMyMac X 4.4.1 and
Malwarebytes working together, there were some
chunks of adware and malware that still needed
to be hunted down and removed on their own.
A search engine utility had to manually remove
from the Safari > Preferences > Extensions
settings and a questionable PDF reader had to
be uninstalled through CleanMyMac X 4.4.1’s
Uninstaller module, which became another chore.
Neither CleanMyMac X 4.4.1 or Malwarebytes
was perfect for the task at hand, but after months
of development and promises of significant
releases and improvements in this feature, the
end result was a letdown. Granted, MacPaw isn’t
working to be a malware prevention or security
company, but they’ve touted this feature as a
prominent component of CleanMyMac X and I feel
that it gave far too much questionable software a
complete pass, leaving behind software that will
happily change your search engine settings toOctober 2019 • Macworld 67REVIEWincluding the infamous MacKeeper and Advanced
Mac Cleaner, which, once installed, loads itself
into your Mac’s startup items, informs you of how
many threats it’s noticed, then offers a phone
number to call for 24/7 live tech support.
Upon noticing the malware that was still
left over after rebooting, I switched over to a
free copy of Malwarebytes, which picked up 11
threats during its scan, including questionable
applications such as Advanced Mac Cleaner,
Advanced Mac Tuner, and MacKeeper, and
proceeded to tear them out by the roots.
Even with CleanMyMac X 4.4.1 and
Malwarebytes working together, there were some
chunks of adware and malware that still needed
to be hunted down and removed on their own.
A search engine utility had to manually remove
from the Safari > Preferences > Extensions
settings and a questionable PDF reader had to
be uninstalled through CleanMyMac X 4.4.1’s
Uninstaller module, which became another chore.
Neither CleanMyMac X 4.4.1 or Malwarebytes
was perfect for the task at hand, but after months
of development and promises of significant
releases and improvements in this feature, the
end result was a letdown. Granted, MacPaw isn’t
working to be a malware prevention or security
company, but they’ve touted this feature as a
prominent component of CleanMyMac X and I feel
that it gave far too much questionable software a
complete pass, leaving behind software that will
happily change your search engine settings to