More recently, MacKeeper ads have been the bane of the Mac world, being one of the most prominent ads displayed by adware that sneaks onto people’s systems. The first was filed by Gregory Ward of Chicago, claiming that, “ZeoBIT uses a common deceptive scheme to trick consumers into purchasing its MacKeeper software, which ultimately fails to deliver the utility ZeoBIT promises.” The second was filed by Holly Yencha, of Pennsylvania, against ZeoBIT, seeking a sum of $5 million. This year has seen two separate class action lawsuits filed against ZeoBIT, alleging fraud. Of course, those are both unethical, so it doesn’t really matter much which was the cause. It is still unclear whether this was the result of astroturfing (ie, posting of fake reviews under numerous fake aliases) or whether it was caused by a rumored ZeoBIT rewards program offering free upgrades in exchange for reviews. This went on for some time before it finally stopped. In March of 2012, a colleague of mine (Derek Currie) spotted hundreds of fake MacKeeper reviews being posted on VersionTracker and MacUpdate. As he told me at the time, “We pay a 50% affiliate commission and sometimes our affiliates go wild and have a lapse in judgement with the way Mackeeper is promoted.” Soon after, I was contacted by a ZeoBIT representative named Mike Clark, offering to pay me for some unnamed consulting work, and giving an explanation for the unethical advertising that I would hear many times over the intervening years: an affiliate was to blame. However, it’s probably not coincidence that the, , and sites all are registered with eNom, Inc.Īround that time, I wrote an article titled Beware MacKeeper. That domain’s ownership is still hidden behind the WhoisGuard service. There is no proof today that ZeoBIT (aka Kromtech) still owns the domain. They obfuscated their ownership of the site, using the WhoisGuard service, and changed the content. This persisted for some time, until eventually the tide of public opinion caused ZeoBIT to change the site. This fake ClamXav site included an overview of ClamXav, making it sound like the page was an official ClamXav page, yet at the bottom, the green Download button would take the user to the MacKeeper site. At right is a screenshot of the original site, pulled from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.) (The real ClamXav site is, while the fake site set up by ZeoBIT was. MacKeeper first caught my attention in 2011, when ZeoBIT set up a fake ClamXav site. How do you know what’s true? In this article, I will make the case that MacKeeper, and the company behind it (ZeoBIT/Kromtech), are not to be trusted.įirst, a little history. At the same time, you will find a number of positive reviews out there. It is one of the most aggressively-marketed products in the Mac world, and there are numerous accusations that it isn’t useful or even that it is fraudulent. November 2nd, 2014 at 11:04 AM EST, modifiedĬontroversy about MacKeeper has been around almost as long as MacKeeper has existed.
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