Advanced Mac Cleaner strikes again!

It’s been a truism on macOS for some time that the most reviled piece of software on the platform is MacKeeper, but brother-in-arms Advanced Mac Cleaner must be running it a close second.

Advanced Mac Cleaner is produced by PCVark and has many incarnations. Aside from ‘AMC’, it’s also distributed as Mac Tonic, Mac Mechanic, Malware-Crusher, Mac Optimizer and now, the most recent form we’re seeing, Mac Auto Fixer.







Like all the other forms of AMC, this app gets bundled in with fake Flash installers and writes itself all over your Mac to multiple places inside your user and local domain Library folders. Here’s a 40-second video showing how Mac users get tricked into installing AMC and its fake virus scanner:

For those of you that want to remove Mac Auto Fixer and related manually, here’s a list of most of the paths you should look for:

/Applications/Mac Auto Fixer.app
/Library/Advanced Mac Cleaner
/Library/Application Support/Advanced Mac Cleaner
/Library/Application Support/amc
/Library/Application Support/Mac Mechanic
/Library/Application Support/Mac Tonic
/Library/Application Support/MacOptimizer
/Library/Application Support/maf
/Library/hlprmaf/mafgset.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.pcv.amcuninstall.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.pcv.hlpramcn.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.techyutil.maftask.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.techyutil.mafuninstaller.plist
/Library/Mac Mechanic
/Library/Mac Tonic
/Library/MacOptimizer
/Library/Preferences/com.techyutils.cleaner.plist
/Volumes/MacAutoFixer/.hlpr/Mac Auto Fixer
/Volumes/MacAutoFixer/.hlpr/maf
~/Applications/Mac Auto Fixer.app
~/Library/Advanced Mac Cleaner
~/Library/Application Support/Advanced Mac Cleaner
~/Library/Application Support/amc
~/Library/Application Support/Mac Auto Fixer
~/Library/Application Support/Mac Mechanic
~/Library/Application Support/Mac Tonic
~/Library/Application Support/MacOptimizer
~/Library/Application Support/maf
~/Library/Caches/com.pcv.amcuninstallhelper
~/Library/Caches/com.pcv.rlistupdater
~/Library/Caches/com.PCvark.Advanced-Mac-Cleaner
~/Library/Caches/com.techyutil.macautofixer
~/Library/Caches/com.techyutil.maftask
~/Library/Caches/com.techyutil.maftaskreviser
~/Library/Caches/com.techyutil.mafuninstaller
~/Library/Caches/com.techyutils.cleaner
~/Library/hlprmaf
~/Library/hlprmaf/mafgset.plist
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.pcv.amcuninstall.plist
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.pcv.hlpramcn.plist
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.techyutil.maftask.plist
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.techyutil.mafuninstaller.plist
~/Library/Logs/Advanced Mac Cleaner.log
~/Library/Logs/helperamc.log
~/Library/Logs/Mac Auto Fixer.log
~/Library/Logs/maftask.log
~/Library/Mac Auto Fixer
~/Library/Mac Mechanic
~/Library/Mac Tonic
~/Library/MacOptimizer
~/Library/Preferences/com.pcv.hlpramc.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.PCvark.Advanced-Mac-Cleaner.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutil.macautofixer.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutil.maftask.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutil.mafuninstaller.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutils.cleaner.plist


You can also save yourself a whole lot of grief by using my shareware troubleshooting tool DetectX Swift, which will not only find all these pesky elements for you, it’ll remove them all for you, too. There’s no requirement to pay, we don’t mind ridding your Mac of this stuff for free!

Enjoy! 😀

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