MacDefender Removal How-To
Mar 11, 2025
How to remove MacDefender
View Video Transcript
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hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how you can get rid of the application
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Mac Defender now if you don't know what
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this is It's malware and it's one of the
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big New pieces of malware that's come
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out for Mac OS 10 so people are making a
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big deal about it honestly it's not a
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huge deal and it's extremely easy to
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remove if it happens to you and you end
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up getting this piece of malware so if
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you do get this vir you'll know it
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because you'll see this window pop up on
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your screen that says you know control
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center up at the top and and pretty much
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it tells you to scan your system for
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viruses and it's called Mac Defender and
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you'll see this pop up and it'll be
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really annoying and what it really wants
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you to do is register the program by
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putting in your credit card number and
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from there you have the possibility of
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getting scammed so to remove this virus
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first of all you're going to have to
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kill the application
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so I'm going to open up a new finder
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window and I'm going to go into my
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applications folder and from there I'm
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going to go into my utilities folder
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and activity monitor so here in activity
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monitor here's all your processes you're
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going to look for the Mac Defender
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process and it'll be listed right here
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under process name and you know you'll
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see the process now it could be called
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one of three things either Mac Defender
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Mac security or Mac protector either of
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those it could show up as so you have to
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select the process um for this example
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since I don't really have the virus
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we'll just choose mail and there's a big
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red stop sign here it says quit process
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so I'm going to click quit process and
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you're going to get this warning that
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you know asks you do you really want to
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quit it well yes you do so you can hit
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quit and the application should just
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close so once you've killed the process
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now you're going to have to pop open
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another finder window and find the MAC
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Defender application and it's in your
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applications folder the icon will look
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just like this so you know what it'll
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look like and once again it could be
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called Mac Defender Mac security or Mac
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protector so you find one of those and
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you're going to you know I don't have it
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in here but drag it to the trash can and
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empty the trash so after you've done
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that there's only one more step if you
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launch system preferences from your
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Apple logo menu and pop it open go into
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the accounts tab under system and click
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on the login items tab you're going to
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see the application listed on this list
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and you know once again Mac Defender Mac
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security or Mac protector could be
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called You're Going to select it and
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then click the minus button right
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here and that'll delete the selected
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application so that it won't start at
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login and once you do that the virus is
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gone that's it it's completely gone from
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your system and you don't have to worry
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about it anymore now to prevent you from
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getting this virus again there's two
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simple things you can do first of all
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you can open up Safari and then go under
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the Safari menu click
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preferences and go under the general tab
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now under here you're going to
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see a little check box right here and it
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says open safe files after downloading
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and that's movies pictures sounds things
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like that it'll open those and other
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archives meaning zip folders all kinds
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of things like that and normally after
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you download those they automatically
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open now by default this will be checked
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and all you have to do is uncheck it and
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now these types of things won't open so
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if you had this virus it's most likely
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because this box was checked and it
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automatically opened the virus
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installer and then it was installed that
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way personally I leave this unchecked
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anyways just because I find it annoying
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to have stuff opening right away after I
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download it but just in case you would
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ever get to the point again where the
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virus would you know start the installer
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here's uh what the installer looks like
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you can see install mac Defender setup
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that's what it looks like you don't want
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to install this and you don't really
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want to install any application on your
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Mac if you're not positively sure what
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it is so if you don't have this yet and
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you ever see this come up on your
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computer do not install it and make sure
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you don't ever enter any credit card
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information to the this virus and if you
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do you'll probably want to get rid of
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that credit card as soon as possible to
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avoid getting scammed so that's about
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all if you have mac Defender and you
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follow these steps it should be gone and
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you should be all set and ready to work
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just like you were before so that's
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about all guys I hope you found this
4:46
video useful thank you for watching
#Antivirus & Malware
#Computer Security