MacKeeper: Kanye West’s screenshot shows rapper being targeted by equally controversial software
The tweet was mocked for apparently showing Kanye visiting The Pirate Bay and spurning Tidal despite his public support — but something much more worrying was hidden inside it
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Your support makes all the difference.Kanye West tweeted out a picture apparently showing him browsing The Pirate Bay, for which he has been roundly mocked. But one of his other tabs contained perhaps a far more worrying page.
MacKeeper, which could be seen in the fifth tab along on Kanye West’s computer, is a piece of software that is marketed through various pushy advertising techniques and has attracted vast amounts of complaints for not actually working.
Mr West appears to have come into contact with MacKeeper through a “pop-under” on The Pirate Bay website. That is one of the most popular ways of coming across the company and its app, which is advertised by opening up new tabs under the current one which are showed when the user gets round to shutting the page that they’re on.
The company also sends little pop-ups that mimic the official alerts sent by Macs. “Please consider cleaning your Mac from junk”, the message reads, and clicking “OK” prompts people to leave to the MacKeeper software page.
The company’s other big advertising technique is having user reviews posted around the internet that help it appear to be receiving love from users. But many of those reviews appear to have come affiliate sites, which make money by encouraging people to buy the software.
The company has said that its advertising techniques lead to satisfied customers.
Some have suggested that the software itself is not as good as claimed, and slows down computers and causes issues for users. But the company says that much of that criticism comes from people annoyed with its advertising techniques, rather than the apps themselves.
The company told blog Cult of Mac that “some people take their hatred for advertising to a level where they dedicate hours of their lives to making MacKeeper a “Forum Punching Bag’.
“In a perfect world there would be no advertisements on radio, TV, billboards or the internet, but this is not a reality. As long as there are ads, there will be people who hate them.”
The company told The Independent that it had been working to ensure that ads were not problematic. It launched a new Anti Scare Ads Initiative to allow users to report problem ads, and its compliance department will look to have them taken down.
Removing the software can be a difficult process. The software makes itself very hard to delete — and even once that has successfully been done, it installs itself in various parts of the operating system so that it manages to cling on.
The best way to remove the software if it is sticking around is to search for the word MacKeeper, or its developer Kromtech, and remove everything that comes up.
MacKeeper was contacted to comment on this article, but had not responded at the time of publication.
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