Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner rogue optimization tool from Mac OS X to stop its frustrating alerts and undo the concomitant bad effects it calls forth.
May 15, 2016 How to remove Advanced Mac Cleaner. Alternatively you can simultaneously press ⌘ (the Command key situated next to the space bar), Option (the key right next to it) and Escape (the key located at the upper left corner of your keyboard). If you have done it right a dialog box titled Force Quit Applications will open up. The Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus. Advanced Mac Cleaner is considered a malicious program. PUP like Advanced Mac Cleaner is tied to a myriad of security problems, the most dangerous one being a potential ransomware infection. There’s a term among the IT community for such software – PUP. The abbreviation stands for Potentially Unwanted Program.
Update: October 2019
Advanced Mac Cleaner usually appears on Mac boxes out of the blue and floods the victim’s experience with annoying warning messages. Also known as Mac Cleaner, it dupes the user into thinking that their machine has got numerous problems hindering normal performance. According to the fake alerts, the operating system’s productivity is impacted by junk files, duplicate objects, unneeded login items, crammed up cache, trash and logs, as well as rogue apps that are claimed to occupy excessive hard disk space and thus reduce the processing speed as well as responsiveness to commands. The number of these wrongfully reported items is flagrant, going over 1000 even on a well-tuned or new Mac computer.
It’s not a commonplace distribution practice that’s leveraged by Advanced Mac Cleaner makers to promote their nasty brainchild. A great deal of infected users have caught this pseudo optimizer when installing free tools such as FileZilla or updating Adobe Flash Player via downloads from unofficial sources. In these cases, the setup wizard prompts you that an extra applet will be installed as a bonus to make the Mac run smoother. Some people are prudent enough to avoid such offers, which are generally known to deliver adware programs, but this caution doesn’t always help. Unless the bundle is manually unchecked and thus opted out of from the start, Advanced Mac Cleaner will still be installed in the background.
Furthermore, the culprit may additionally cross-promote affiliated scareware like Mac Adware Cleaner by means of prompts on its GUI. To add insult to injury, it may hijack the victim’s default web browser and redirect their traffic to landing pages pushing its licensed version or a copy of another rogue system utility, such as Mac Tonic or Mac Auto Fixer. The malware is also known to propagate alongside browser redirect viruses and persistent adware apps that affect the victim’s web surfing experience. One of the notorious campaigns pushing the scareware in question relies on sketchy browser alerts that report alleged infection with a combo of 3 viruses called Tapsnake, CronDNS, and Dubfishicv. The victims are redirected to phony web pages that mimic AppleCare and insist on urgent download of Advanced Mac Cleaner to sort out the problem that isn’t there in the first place. It appears that the gang behind the rogue program in question is deploying a well-orchestrated malicious marketing campaign with a distinct flavor of social engineering.
How To Get Rid Of Mac Cleaner Virus Youtube
The user may be unaware of this forcible setup from the get-go, but not until a message like the one above pops up. It says that a huge number of issues have been found, specifying this information as follows “Issues may include duplicate files, system & internet junk, rogue software & recoverable drive space. Fix and enjoy a performance boost.” The ‘Start Repair’ button, if clicked, takes you to the junk application’s main interface that displays high improvement potential for each cluster of problems. Obviously, cleaning the purported bugs is a paid service. At that point, it’s reasonable to contemplate over what’s happening: you are being told to pay for rectifying issues that do not exist. It’s certainly the best move to get rid of the Advanced Mac Cleaner scam rather than follow the evildoers’ recommendations.
Another flavor of this scareware problem surfaced in October 2019. It was precipitated by a release of Apple’s macOS Catalina 10.15. After upgrading their operating system to the new version, numerous users started experiencing obnoxious popup activity with Advanced Mac Cleaner at its core. The annoying notifications say, “helperamc will damage your computer. You should move it to the Bin.” The process mentioned on these alerts is spawned by the rogue system tool under scrutiny and can be seen in the Activity Monitor, along with other related executables called “amcuninstall” and “hlpramc”.
Here is what’s happening: the latest macOS build, evidently, leverages an improved algorithm to identify potentially harmful apps. In particular, it will flag a program as a malicious one if it was installed on an unknown date, if its installer was downloaded from an unverified source, or in case some other telltale signs of sketchy activity are spotted. To let the users know about such suspicious objects, the system displays the above-mentioned popup dialogs. In this situation, the infection is probably in a dormant state and doesn’t manifest itself conspicuously. The Catalina update has simply unearthed the issue due to new security perks it delivers. Unfortunately, although the warnings include a “Move to Bin” button, it doesn’t work as intended. Therefore, the victims have to do their homework and find a way to remove Advanced Mac Cleaner despite its persistence.
Advanced Mac Cleaner manual removal for Mac
The steps listed below will walk you through the removal of this application. Be sure to follow the instructions in the order specified.
- Open up the Utilities folder as shown below
- Locate the Activity Monitor icon on the screen and double-click on it
- Under Activity Monitor, find the entry for Advanced Mac Cleaner, select it and click Quit Process
- A dialog should pop up, asking if you are sure you would like to quit the Advanced Mac Cleaner (it can be manifested as an object named helperamc) executable. Select the Force Quit option
- Expand the Go menu in Apple Finder and select Go to Folder
- Type or paste the following string in the folder search dialog: /Library/LaunchAgents
- Once the LaunchAgentsdirectory opens up, find the following entries in it and move them to Trash:
- com.pcv.hlpramc.plist
- com.pcv.helperamc.plist
- com.pcv.amcuninstall.plist
- com.PCvark.AdvancedMacCleaner.plist
- Use the Go to Folder lookup feature again to navigate to the folder named ~/Library/LaunchAgents. When this path opens, look for the same entries (see above) and send them to Trash
- Similarly, go to the ~Library/Application Support folder. Locate and move the following entries to Trash:
- Advanced Mac Cleaner
- amc
- Click the Go button again, but this time select Applications on the list. Find the entry for Advanced Mac Cleaner entry on the interface, right-click on it and select Move to Trash. If user password is required, go ahead and enter it
- Now go to Apple Menu and pick the System Preferences option
- Select Accounts and click the Login Items button. Mac OS will come up with the list of the items that launch when the box is started up. Locate Advanced Mac Cleaner there and click on the '-' button
Use automatic tool to completely uninstall Advanced Mac Cleaner from your Mac
- Download and install MacBooster application (read review). The tool provides both optimization and security features for your Mac. Before you get down to obliterating Advanced Mac Cleaner virus proper, consider checking your machine for other security risks and performance issues by hitting the Scan button. Download Now
- Proceed to the Uninstaller feature, find Advanced Mac Cleaner on the Applications list and have MacBooster completely eliminate all components of the app from your Mac by clicking Uninstall in the bottom part of the GUI. Doing so will ensure all components of the malware and its remainders, which may have not been removed in the manual way, will be thoroughly cleaned up.
FAQ
Unlike benign software, Advanced Mac Cleaner is a stubborn app that attempts to complicate the uninstall process. It means that you need to circumvent its hindrance before deleting the associated components and files. This adds an extra step to the removal logic. In most cases, the following workflow does the trick:
- Open the Activity Monitor, find an entry named “helperamc”, “hlpramc” or another process with “amc” part in its name, and quit the malicious executable.
- Look for related files (com.pcv.hlpramc.plist, com.pcv.helperamc.plist, com.pcv.amcuninstall.plist, com.PCvark.AdvancedMacCleaner.plist, Advanced Mac Cleaner, amc) in the LaunchAgents and Application Support folders. Remove these objects if found.
- Go to the Finder and select Applications. Spot ‘Advanced Mac Cleaner’ app and move it to the Trash. Empty the Trash when done.
Ideally, this technique should eradicate the scareware, but with the caveat that the files may vary as new versions of Advanced Mac Cleaner appear in the wild. Stay tuned for updates in the guide above to make sure your removal efforts are effective.
Advanced Mac Cleaner is a rogue system utility that wrongfully purports to look for and fix Mac performance issues and privacy risks. Instead of carrying through with these promises, it reports non-existent problems and tries to pressure the user into buying its licensed version to unlock the repair features. This scareware is installed behind the user’s back, usually arriving with complex app bundles camouflaged as one useful program.
At first sight, it may seem that the impact of Advanced Mac Cleaner is restricted to annoying scan reports and scary-looking popup alerts. That’s a misconception. This fake optimizer isn’t safe to use, because it can harvest your sensitive information and send it to the cybercriminals in charge of the campaign. Your usernames and passwords, as well as credit card information, are potentially at risk as long as this pest is running on your Mac.
No, it’s not. The huge amount of negative feedback about this program speaks volumes about its dirty practices, not to mention the obvious elements of foul play in its modus operandi. Advanced Mac Cleaner is distributed via covert software bundles and fake virus alerts shown on numerous malicious websites. Once installed, it deluges the host system with deceptive scans and popup alerts reporting hundreds or even thousands of imaginary performance and security issues. The objective of this brainwashing is to coerce the victim to purchase the app’s license, which is supposedly a prerequisite of addressing the detected threats. Another shady quirk is that Advanced Mac Cleaner is harder to uninstall than regular Mac applications. All in all, this scareware is neither legit nor safe.
You may have heard it's said that Macs don’t get viruses. That there’s no Apple virus. You may even have said it yourself. Sadly, it’s not true. According to AppleInsider portal, the number of detected Mac viruses jumped up 60% in 2019. And, it’s not just viruses you have to be wary of. There are all sorts of different forms of malware, from bits of code that download themselves and show you adverts for things you have no interest in, to really nasty bugs that steal your personal data.
How do I know if my Mac has a virus?
Before you remove a virus from a Mac, you need to be sure it actually has one. We’ve covered that in more detail in this article but here are a few pointers.
- Your Mac starts behaving erratically and doing things you don’t expect;
- Your Mac starts running very slowly, as if something is hogging the processor;
- You start seeing adverts on your desktop;
- You find software or applications you didn’t install.
- An app asks for your administrator password
These symptoms may mean your Mac has a virus, although there could be other explanations.
How to remove a virus from a Mac
Thankfully, there are lots of ways to do it. And Mac virus removal doesn’t have to cost money.
1. Delete browser extensions
One of the most common types of malware comes in the form of browser extensions. Even extensions that aren’t particularly malicious can be annoying, and if you didn’t deliberately install them, they’re malware. Here’s how to get rid of unwanted browser extensions.
Safari
- Launch Safari.
- Click Safari in the top menu, then choose Safari Extensions.
- Look down the list and click on any extensions that look suspicious. Read the description of the extension. If you don’t remember installing it, click Uninstall.
- Repeat until you’ve removed all the extensions you don’t want.
Chrome
- Launch Chrome.
- Click on the 3-dot icon in the upper right corner.
- Select More Tools and choose Extensions from the menu that appears.
- Look over the extensions in the browser window and click Remove on any that you don’t recognise.
Firefox
- Launch Firefox.
- Click the 3-line (hamburger) icon at the top right corner.
- Choose Add-ons
- Click the Extensions tab and remove on any you don’t recognise.
2. Uninstall apps
Malware comes in lots of different forms. And it even comes disguised as security software to help you get rid of viruses! Devious, huh?
If you’ve inadvertently downloaded an app that turns out to be a virus, you need to uninstall it immediately. There are a couple of ways to do this. Here’s the hard way.
- Go to your applications folder and drag the app to the Trash.
- Go to your ~/Library folder and look in the Application support folder for any files related to the app and drag those to the Trash.
- Look in the other folders in ~/Library, especially Launch Agents and Launch Daemons and remove any files related to the app from there. But be careful, if you remove files used by legitimate app you could cause lots of problems.
- Repeat Step 3 for your Mac’ main Library folder.
The easy way: Uninstall apps in a few clicks
- Download and launch CleanMyMac X.
- Click Uninstaller.
- Check the box next to the application name.
- Click Uninstall.
If you don’t know the name of the application, it’s more difficult. But if you use CleanMyMac, all you have to do is scroll through the list of applications and look for any you don’t recognise or don’t need and remove them. CleanMyMac removes every trace of an app, including files that you may overlook when you remove applications manually. This is particularly important for viruses, so it’s much better to use CleanMyMac.
What's makes this method even better, is that CleanMyMac X also shows you app leftovers that remained after the main app is gone.
3. Use a malware removal tool
While the above steps work very well in lots of cases, sometimes the Mac virus removal means using a dedicated application to scan and remove malware from your Mac.
There are lots of these applications available, and many of them are either free or allow you to at the very least scan your Mac for free to find out whether you need to take action. Be careful, however. It’s important to choose a tool from a reputable vendor. If you just google ‘Mac antivirus tool’ some of the results may well be for tools that are themselves malicious and instead of removing viruses from your Mac will infect it. We recommend using CleanMyMac X.
It can identify thousands of malware threats, including adware, spyware, ransomware, worms, cryptocurrency miners. And if CleanMyMac finds something suspicious, it will offer immediate removal. Here’s how to perform a full system scan:
- Download CleanMyMac X (free download) and launch the app.
- Click on the Malware Removal tab.
- Click Scan.
- Click Remove.
4. Escape the virus: Create a new user profile
Usually viruses are attached to a particular user profile on your computer. In this way they are able to seize control of your admin profile. But you can start if from scratch and create a new user on your Mac. Don't worry, you will be able to transfer all your important data from one user to another.
Go to Apple menu > System Preferences, click Users & Groups.
- Click the lock icon , then type in your admin password.
- Use the plus sign to add new user profile
To move your important information from one user to another, you will need to access the Shared folder.
Click on the Finder > Go to Folder...
Paste in this: /Users
Can you see the Shared folder? Here you can copy the needed files from your old user account. Hurray, you've started a clean, virus-free life!
How To Get Rid Of Mac Cleaner Virus
Bonus tip: Clean up your login items
Login items are apps that launch automatically upon startup. Malware programs would often sneak into your login items without you knowing. How to prevent them from launching?
Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences
Click Users & Groups
Click on the Login items tab
From here you can manage them using the [+] and [—] buttons.
How to disable the invisible agents
Some small supporting applications never show up in the Login items. They are called the Launch agents and may as well be hacked by viruses. You can find them with the universal Mac cleaner, CleanMyMac. This app is notarized by Apple, so you are safe using it.
Download the cleaner here — the link to a free edition
Launch the app and go to the Optimization tab
Click Launch agents
How many apps do you see there? Remove any flash players, automatic updaters, or everything else that you find suspicious. Even if you deleted the main app itself, its launch agents may still occupy your drive. Here is what I have:
To prevent your Mac from infection, the above app has a real-time monitor tool. It sees that no harmful apps place their code in your Launch Agents. It monitors several such locations that could be gateways for viruses.
How to get rid of virus on a Macbook Pro (or any other Mac) if all else fails
If you’ve run through all the steps above and are still having problems trying to remove a virus from a Mac, the next step is to restore from a Time Machine backup. The benefit of restoring from Time Machine is that you can do it quickly and easily by booting into the recovery partition and you can choose to backup to a state just before your Mac started behaving erratically.
The downside of this option is that any work you’ve done since the backup you restore from will be lost. You could manually copy files from your Mac to another drive or cloud storage service before you restore and then copy them back afterwards. However, if one of those files is infected, you risk contaminating your Mac all over again. If there are documents you really need and that aren’t backed up elsewhere, use one of the antivirus tools above to run a scan on them before you copy them to another disk. That way you’ll know they’re safe.
Here’s how to restore from a Time Machine backup
- Make sure you’re connected to your Time Machine backup drive.
- Restart your Mac, holding down the Command and R keys until you see the Apple logo. When the macOS Utilities screen appears, choose Restore from a Time Machine Backup. Click Continue.
- Choose the last backup before your Mac started misbehaving or you suspect you were infected with a virus.
Your Mac will now return to the state it was in when you made that backup.
If you don’t have a Time Machine backup to restore from, the last resort is to reinstall macOS. This is a ground-zero approach. You’ll need to wipe your startup drive completely clean and start again. That means re-installing all your applications and copying all your data back to your Mac afterwards. If you have a recent backup of your data, from before your Mac became infected, you can use that to copy data from after you re-install. If not, you’ll need to back up important files now — but scan them with an antivirus tool first to make sure they’re not infected.
To perform a clean install of macOS, you’ll need a bootable installer disk. Creating one is beyond the scope of this article, but there is a comprehensive guide here.
How To Get Rid Of Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus 2018
Once you’ve made your bootable installer, plug it into your Mac, go to System Preferences, choose Startup Disk and select the disk you just plugged in. Restart your Mac, holding down Command-R and do the following:
Clean My Mac From Virus
- When the macOS Utilities screen appears, select Reinstall a new copy of macOS. Click Continue and then Continue again when the next window appears.
- Agree to the terms and conditions and select your Mac’s internal disk.
- Click Install. Wait for your Mac to restart.
- Your Mac will startup as if it’s a new Mac and you’ll need to go through the process of setting it up from scratch.
- Once you’ve set it up, copy back the files you need from the backup and that you know aren’t infected.
As you can see, there are many different ways to remove a virus from a Mac, depending on how badly infected it is and what kind of virus it is. The main thing to remember is if you suspect your Mac is infected, don’t worry. It can be fixed!