The document discusses the controversy around the software MacKeeper. While most professional reviews praise MacKeeper, many users criticize it online. There are several reasons for this, including an alleged negative PR campaign by a competitor, aggressive marketing tactics, misbehaving affiliates, and confusion with malware called MacDefender. Both MacKeeper's PR director and a Symantec manager say criticisms are often based on rumors rather than experience with the software itself. While MacKeeper's marketing may rub some the wrong way, the document concludes it is not a scam and the software itself appears to be legitimate.

1. Is MacKeeper Really A Scam?
norton-scientificcollection.com/collection

3. MacKeeper gets a bad rap, but what's really behind the controversy?
MacKeeper is a strange piece of software. There may
be no other app as controversial in the Apple world.
The application, which performs various janitorial
duties on your hard drive, is loathed by a large
segment of the Mac community. Check out any blog
, site or forum that mentions it, and you’ll find
hundreds of furious comments condemning
MacKeeper and Zeobit, the company behind it. We
discovered this ourselves earlier this month, when
we offered a 50%-off deal on MacKeeper. Look at
all those furious comments on the post.

4. The complaints about MacKeeper are all over
the shop: It’s a virus. It holds your machine
hostage until you pay up. It can’t be completely
removed if you decide to delete it. Instead of
speeding up your computer, it slows it down. It
erases your hard drive, deletes photos, and
disappears documents. There are protests about
MacKeeper’s annual subscription fees. Zeobit is
slammed for seedy marketing tactics. It runs
pop-under ads, plants sock-puppet reviews and
encourages sleazy affiliate sites, critics say.
But what’s really strange is that MacKeeper has
been almost universally praised by professional
reviewers. All week I’ve been checking out
reviews on the Web and I can’t find a bad one.

5. All the reviews praise the software for being well
designed and easy to use. Macworld magazine
calls it “a gem.” TUAW gives it a favorable review. Dave
Hamilton of Backbeat Media, a Mac industry veteran,
recently talked it up at Macworld Expo. None of the
professional reviewers complain of slowed-down
machines or deleted data.
Given the comments on our deals post, I started
researching Zeobit and MacKeeper. (Our deals, by the
way, are determined by our partners, StackSocial.) I was
alarmed that Cult of Mac might be promoting malware,
but quickly became curious why such well-reviewed
software gets such bad reviews from users. I reached
out to Zeobit and Symantec, which publishes anti-virus
and security software under the Norton brand.
Jeremiah Fowler, Zeobit’s PR Director,
said Mac security companies get a bad rap because
Apple users generally believe there is no need for anti-
virus products. The Mac is immune to malware,
according to users, and therefore any company that
sells security software is by definition a scam.

6. “I personally believe it is just the nature of the
business in the age of internet trolling and it is so easy
for anyone with too much time on their hands to trash
businesses or products online anonymously and with no
repercussions,” he wrote in an email. “We have 150
employees and really do care about the products we
make and the people who use them.”
Symantec’s Mac Product Manager, Mike Romo, said
the same thing: the company is criticized for the very
idea of selling security products for the Mac. Users
think they are utterly unnecessary and ruin the
frictionless experience of OS X. “It’s a great
community but it’s very vocal,” Romo said in a
telephone interview. “It would be a lot easier to make
a painting program or something.”
Romo, who describes himself as a hard-core Mac user,
said users voice similar complaints to those heard by
Zeobit. However, he says the criticisms are like an
urban myth — they are based on rumor and hearsay. “I
ask them if they have used our product,” he said.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, they have not.”

7. “We’re used to getting the hate,” he added,” but we love
and believe in what we are doing.”
Zeobit’s Fowler said the company has become a “forum
punching bag” thanks to four things: a negative PR
campaign from a rival company; Zeobit’s aggressive
advertising tactics; out-of-control affiliates; and
confusion among users between MacKeeper (legit
software) and MacDefender (a Trojan). (See Fowler’s full
note below.)
While looking into Zeobit last week, I came to some of
these same conclusions myself. Zeobit has earned a lot
of notoriety for its advertising practices. It’s a very
active and aggressive marketer. It runs online ads
everywhere, including sneaky pop-unders. It parades
scantily-clad booth babes at Macworld. The company
also runs an affiliate program that appears to be widely
abused. According to Fowler, the sleaziest Zeobit
marketing comes from third parties that it has no
control over.

8. Some of the wilder accusations — that Zeobit
is a hacker outfit that makes an insidious virus
— are way off. The company was one of the
sponsors of Macworld, which is as mainstream
as a trade show gets. Apple sells
a lite version of MacKeeper called 911 Bundle
through the official Mac App Store, which is
carefully vetted for malware.
Likewise, Cult of Mac does not offer malware
through our Deals program. As far as I can
tell, MacKeeper is a legit piece of software
run by a company whose sales and marketing
tactics rub many in the Mac community the
wrong way. It may not be for everyone, but
MacKeeper is not a virus or a scam. And right
now, it’s 50% off ;-).
Here’s is MacKeeper’s PR Director Jeremiah
Fowler’s full statement to Cult of Mac:
++

9. Hello Leander,
Thanks for your message and I will be
happy to contact a 3rd party user
about speaking with you. With the bad
comments we are all too aware of them
and they actually fall under a few
different categories of why people are
anti-MacKeeper. Just to give you an
idea of what we face on a daily basis,
here is a short breakdown of the key
reasons people complain.

10. Also, as a general rule look at some of the other
companies who are in the business of Mac
security and see the search results for example if
you search Google for norton+mac+sucksyou will
get about 18,700,000 results… We know that
Norton is not a bad company, right? You may not
like them or their products but you know they are
not scammers and their software is not malware,
but the internet is loaded with thousands of
results saying the opposite. The results are the
almost the same for nearly every industry leading
software that offers Mac Security. I personally
believe it is just the nature of the business in the
age of “Internet Trolling” and it is so easy for
anyone with too much time on their hands to
trash businesses or products online anonymously
and with no repercussions. We have 150 employees
and really do care about the products we make
and the people who use them. You can see some
of our real customers and industry professionals
talking about MacKeeper on
our YouTube Channel here.

11. Reasons:
1) Black PR
We were the victim of a massive black PR
campaign by a small competitor who is now
cloning our apps one at a time:
The story was featured here:
EXCLUSIVE: MacKeeper Says “Unethical Competitor Trying to
These guys were running Google ads saying we
were scammers selling malware and anything
else bad that they could create, we got those
ads suspended for violating Google’s ad terms
and the fine folks at Google 100% confirmed
exactly who was the competitor running them
against us. So, what this did was trigger a kind
of “Band Wagon Effect” of others who were
like “Yea we hate them”. They actually hired
people in their office who used forum spam,
link spam, blogs and paid articles to slander us
in ways we are still feeling a year later. As
mentioned in the article instead of wasting
our time and energy doing the same back to
them, we have decided to focus only on
making our product better and listening to
our real users. We think that focusing on our
products and service instead of forum trolls,
is a far better business model in the long run.

12. 2) Those Who Hate MacKeeper Ads:
Legitimate Mac Users who are annoyed or tired
of our advertising campaigns or partner’s
campaigns. Do we advertise? Yes! Do we advertise
aggressively, I would not like to use that term but
we do have a massive advertising presence online!
We have had 15,000,000 downloads of MacKeeper
and have a less than 3% refund rate. The reality is
that many people are truly happy with the product
even if they hate the advertising (and
unfortunately some do). The bad part is 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.
We believe that we have a great product and we
want people to know about it and the only way to
do this is to explore every medium of
advertisement. It is like investing everything in to
a great restaurant and hiring the best chefs,
buying the best food only to hide the location
somewhere in the woods and then tell no one
about it. Then wondering why no one comes to
your restaurant? We are discussing phasing out
our ads and trying to please the vocal minority,
but we realize that pleasing everyone is impossible.

13. 3) Affiliates Gone Wild:
We have suspended many affiliate
accounts for violating our terms and
while these guys were trying to make a
fast income they were trashing our
image in the process. The problem is
that although we suspend their
account, the effects of their actions
fall on us and cause serious harm to
our reputation in the process.

14. 4) Rogue software (with similar name)
In May 2nd 2011, a rogue security
program called “MacDefender” (also
known as Mac Protector, Mac
Security, Mac Guard, and Mac Shield)
was identified. This
fake antivirus software had nothing to
do with nor had any affiliation with
MacKeeper or ZeoBit LLC, but used
a similar name to MacKeeper. This
also caused a lot of confusion and
created a huge problem of Mac Users
who were not familiar with
MacKeeper.
Please let me know if you have any
additional questions and I will be happy
to help you.
Also please check out some of the real
users on our YouTube Channel. http://
www.youtube.com/MacKeeperTV