Is this a virus or a useful app?
Recently I helped my father with his iMac and I noticed MacKeeper in the Dock. Since I have heard very bad things about this, I questioned him further and he confided that he had used BitTorrent to view some films and that MacKeeper had “just installed itself”. Has he been infected with a virus and what should I do about it? Anne Garvey No, your father has been caught by a trojan. If he casts his mind back, I’m sure he will remember that after his torrent download completed, a pop-up message prompted him for his password in order to install the video or a player for it. OS X displays that message to stop third-party apps installing themselves. Of course, if you manually authorise it, OS X will allow the software to install and run. While a Trojan could theoretically do just about anything once it is installed, in practice the worst that normally happens on a Mac is some adware.
MacKeeper is rather infamous, and has been accused of unscrupulous marketing and making exaggerated claims. It doesn’t do anything you actually need. Removing it is easy: drag it from /Applications to the Trash. If your father has run its scanner, he should trash the MacKeeper Helper folder located in ~/Library/Application Support.