Friday, November 6, 2015

Updating List Of MacUpdate
Adware Infested Installers


 

[Updates: 
- Chrome and Calibre added. Thanks to Morse and mrflick! 
- Dropbox added. List alphabetized. Direct links to developer download pages added.
Please add more in the comments as you find them.
- 2015-11-18: MacUpdate swapped "Install" vs "Download" on ALL their product pages. Apparently, this is some marketing strategy to shove people into using their MacUpdate Desktop application. This verifies that they have some marketing moron helping them to ruin their website. I personally suggest getting rid of said marketing moron influence ASAP, dear MacUpdate, before they kill you.]

November 5th, it was determined that MacUpdate has stopped foisting their 'MacUpdate Installer' adware installer on users who have logged in.

November 6th, I was able to verify ongoing adware infestations and add a couple more infested installers to the list by NOT logging in to MacUpdate. Therefore...

Advice: Log into MacUpdate to avoid the adware installers (at least for the time being!).

Here is the updating list of adware infested installers at MacUpdate, in chronological order of discovery:

AppCleaner
BetterTouchTool 
Calibre
Chrome 
Cyberduck 
Dropbox
FileZilla
Firefox
GitHub Desktop
iBackup Viewer
MPlayerX
Onyx
Skype
VLC

Link to this article if you'd like to keep track of the list. I'll be adding to it as I find or verify reports of adware infested installers at MacUpdate. The current list is thanks to reports from Thomas Reed, Neartheredrocks and myself. Please comment if you find further infested installers. Thanks.

Please remember to NEVER install anything via an obvious adware installer. What is really installed CANNOT be trusted. The fact that these adware installers require your Admin password makes them potentially dangerous to the welfare of your Mac.

Instead, go to the website of the software developer directly and download from there. Direct links to developer download pages are provided in the list above.

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[Footnote: I have ALL of the adware installers I note in this list. I've verified them. I can provide these adware installers to anyone interested in further verification or conducting research. :-Derek]


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