What are Mac ads? Why are you seeing unwanted advertisements on your Mac? What can you do to remove Mac ads?
This article has been created to show you how you can detect adware on your Mac and how to remove any adware components that may currently be in your Mac.
Аdware for Mac has dramatically increased lately and the trend is evolving. Such Mac ads are becoming more diverse and also harder to detect by victims since they often come as legitimate programs.
A recently detected unwanted program plaguing Macs is called DataTransportation.
DataTransportation is an adware program that could infiltrate your Mac device without your knowledge. Once installed on your device, it could affect the settings of your preferred web browser and then start displaying intrusive ads during your browsing sessions.
In this article we will explain how you can detect and remove unwanted Mac programs such as DataTransporation, and how you can protect yourself and your private information.
How Do Mac Ads Programs Spread?
Identifying Mac Ads programs can be done by simply looking at the symptoms based on the type of ad-supported programs lurking in the wild:
- Mac Adware programs.
- Browser Hijackers for Mac.
- Push notifications “viruses” for Mac.
Adware programs may appear on your Mac using the following methods:
- By pretending the program is a legitimate app.
- By adding it automatically after visiting a website.
- By getting the user to accept some sort of Push Notifications on a news website.
- By slithering the unwanted app in the installer of another app and advertising it “as a free extra” or “an optional offer”, a method known as bundling.
How to Detect Adware on Your Mac?
Based on the methods of distribution we have shown you above, unwanted programs that generate Mac ads will lead to the following symptoms:
1st Symptom – Slow Performance of Your Mac
The main symptom of having an ad-supported program on your Mac is by experiencing performance slow-downs which are usually not typical. In general, macOS is a well-optimized operating system and should not lag in performance. In case your Mac’s performance is not as optimized as it usually is, this may be a sign of a virus or an ad-supported program that is using your CPU and other resources.
2nd Symptom: Different Types of Ads Randomly Appearing
If you are seeing aggressive Mac ads that take over your pages space and also randomly appear, then it is highly you have Mac adware. In some forms of adware, the ads can even be shown as search results. In this case, the unwanted program has browser hijacking capabilities, and has changed the default search engine of the affected Mac to a hoax one. So, instead of Google or some other legitimate search engine, you see a bogus engine, that shows you suspicious ads instead of results.
Another form of ads are the so-called Tech Support scam ads, whose primary purpose is to convince you that there is a serious problem with your Mac and you should either call a fake tech support number or download a fake antivirus or optimizer that will “fix your Mac”.
These fake optimizing programs, like Mac Auto Fixer, only want to drain money from your account by finding different fake errors and asking you to pay a lot of money to buy their licensed version in order to fix your performance problems.
Mac ads can be:
- Pop-ups.
- Ad-supported search results.
- Highlighted text ads.
- Banners on the sites you visit.
- Highlighted text ads.
3rd Symptom: Having Suspicious Programs Installed on Your Mac
Here are some examples of programs that generate Mac ads:
These types of programs aim to convince you to pay for their full versions, which usually end up costing hundreds of dollars to show you pop-ups that your system is at risk. More so, a lot of users have complained for some of these programs to start automatically with the booting of their Macs and to run automatic scans that detect hundreds of errors each time, which is not likely to be true.
4th Symptom: You Have Unfamiliar Browser Extensions
One of the main methods used by adware on your Mac is by being automatically added as an add-on or a browser extension that seems to pretend it is useful. Most adware programs tend to imitate:
- Toolbars.
- Weather extensions.
- Ad-blockers.
- Movie streamers.
- Geo-restriction unlockers.
- News on-the-go.
- File converters.
- Page translators.
5th Symptom: Suspicious processes running in Activity Monitor
This symptom is also a key to detecting Mac adware components, because most ads come from such processes and they may still remain even after you manually delete the suspicious program. They often mean that the adware runs with administrative permissions and may even conduct other activities that may be unauthorized on your machine.
How to Protect Your Mac from Data Collection?
Most browser hijackers and adware use tracking technologies on the affected Macs, that collect information during your online browsing and are difficult to detect. These technologies may be cookies; Locally Shared Objects (Flash cookies; pixels; tags; geo-locators; search cookies; session cookies.
These information trackers may collect the following information from your Mac:
- Browsing history.
- What you type online.
- Your search history.
- Your online clicks.
- Your bookmarks.
In order to protect your privacy online you will need to mask your identity and hide your traffic with encryption. The only capable service to do that is VPN software for Mac.
How to Remove Mac Ads?
There are several steps you need to go through to remove these unwanted applications from your Mac, starting with securing it and then going through removing all of the adware components, manually or automatically.
Manual Removal of Mac Ads
Step 1: Disconnect from the web and try to stay offline for as long as possible and when possible while you fix the issues.
Step 2: Change all of your passwords from a safe machine and do not type any passwords on your Mac, since some adware programs may use cookies to obtain information about them.
Step 3: Stop the adware and delete it by following the sub-steps below:
Adware Remover Mac
When you are facing problems on your Mac as a result of unwanted programs that generate ads, the recommended way of eliminating this risk is to take advantage of an anti-malware tool. One such tool is Combo Cleaner, that features advanced security features along with other modules that will improve your Mac’s health and protect it in the future.