In 2019, however, one new piece of adware was detected 30 million times! That’s your dramatic growth right there: one app. Until last year, the top two Mac adware apps had detected installations numbered in the low hundreds of thousands. Mac malware is growing mostly due to one app
![is mac adware cleaner a virus is mac adware cleaner a virus](https://www.howtogeek.com/thumbcache/2/200/6506130028e2444d6ed62d53470a7e8d/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/img_54ee7ce07cefd.jpg)
The PUPs are a variety of mostly “cleaning” apps that have been determined as unwanted not just by Malwarebytes, but by the Mac user community at large, MacKeeper and MacBooster. Where we found several different categories and families in our top detections of Windows threats that classify as traditional malware, especially those aimed at businesses, most Mac threats, and certainly the most prevalent ones of 2019, are families of adware and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) Īmong the top 10 Mac threats (for both consumers and businesses) are a mix of PUPs and adware. Macs differ drastically from Windows in terms of the types of threats seen. This is something Malwarebytes itself acknowledges when you get into the detail. This does things like redirect searches or load tabs automatically to earn ad revenue for the attacker. Macs are mostly only vulnerable to so-called adware. Apple’s protections against this type of attack are extremely strong.
#IS MAC ADWARE CLEANER A VIRUS CODE#
Most Mac malware is more nuisance than dangerįirst, Macs are not generally vulnerable to what we traditionally classify as malware: that is, code which can do nasty things like delete files, or encrypt your drive for a ransomware attack.
![is mac adware cleaner a virus is mac adware cleaner a virus](https://static-cdn.mackeeper.com/mk-site/images/adware-removal/hero.png)
That’s getting a lot of headlines today, but there are three key things that need to be understood…
![is mac adware cleaner a virus is mac adware cleaner a virus](https://www.bleepstatic.com/download/screenshots/a/adwcleaner/gui_small_en.png)
In total, we saw approximately 24 million Windows adware detections and 30 million Mac detections.