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Remove Similar Photo Cleaner virus from Mac

Get the hang of the best practice techniques to uninstall Similar Photo Cleaner virus from Mac and thereby prevent fake scan reports and alerts from popping up.

The most prolific family of rogue Mac software continues to evolve, with a brand new pseudo optimizer iteration called Similar Photo Cleaner having been recently launched into the wild. The impostor app is making the rounds via a massive malvertising campaign and wreaking just about as much havoc as its forerunners Mac Auto Fixer, Mac Tonic and Advanced Mac Cleaner. Unlike the prototypes, though, it inherits the “tried-and-tested” feature set only partially, yet it appears to be persuasive enough to successfully brainwash users. The culprit pretends to find numerous duplicate and similar photos as well as other graphics files and constantly reminds the victim about the purportedly crammed up disk space and hence poor system health status by displaying recurrent scans and popup warnings.

Similar Photo Cleaner virus on Mac

Again, the manipulative tactic leveraged by Similar Photo Cleaner revolves around faking the detection of similar and duplicate photos in thousands of paths on your Mac. Even if your digital image memories are properly organized and every picture is one of a kind, the scareware will claim to spot lookalikes and issues regardless, thus demonstrating how it overstates the disconcerting HDD space and overall memory status of the host Mac. The scans are configured to reoccur, therefore closing the obnoxious program pane isn’t an effective long-term countermeasure. To add more fuel to the furnace of the victim’s frustration, Similar Photo Cleaner also triggers popup notifications that reiterate the deceptive doom and gloom about the condition of the target macOS due to alleged mess with photos. The persuasiveness effect can be further attained via a deliberate system slowdown, which the crooks expect to encourage the unsuspecting victim to make a hasty decision.

What Similar Photo Cleaner wants is a no-brainer to understand – it tries to dupe the plagued Mac user into buying the “fully functional” version. Although this type of a trick is hardly ever encountered in the Windows ecosystem these days, unlike about a decade ago, Macs are being heavily targeted this way. Therefore, no matter how convincing the alerts and scan reports may appear, it is strongly recommended to refrain from paying for the app’s license. It doesn’t do anything useful, not to mention that it mimics a great deal of the detection activity in the first place.

Most users who are at their wit’s end trying to get rid of Similar Photo Cleaner have no clue how it could have possibly infiltrated their computers without their consent. The method is prosaic, though. The scareware slithers its way into Macs along with other applications, constituting software bundles camouflaged as regular installation clients. The people who click through these setups without peeking beyond the default mode run the risk of being contaminated with rogue programs like Similar Photo Cleaner and other potentially unwanted code. One more attack vector involves malicious landing pages you can be redirected to when visiting a compromise website. In this case, the page will state that your Mac might be infected and insist that you download the “cure”.

To recap, Similar Photo Cleaner is an awfully annoying app that imitates performance enhancement and disk space optimization activity. The two fundamental tips regarding this baddie are as follows: don’t purchase its commercial edition; and remove it from your Mac right away.

Similar Photo Cleaner virus manual removal for Mac

The steps listed below will walk you through the removal of this potentially unwanted application. Be sure to follow the instructions in the order specified.

• Open up the Utilities folder as shown below

Open up the Utilities

• Locate the Activity Monitor icon on the screen and double-click on it

Locate the Activity Monitor

• Under Activity Monitor, find the entry for Similar Photo Cleaner, select it and click Quit Process

• A dialog should pop up, asking if you are sure you would like to quit the Similar Photo Cleaner executable. Select the Force Quit option

• Click the Go button again, but this time select Applications on the list. Find the entry for Similar Photo Cleaner on the interface, right-click on it and select Move to Trash. If user password is required, go ahead and enter it

Malicious app icon under Applications

• Now go to Apple Menu and pick the System Preferences option

Pick the System Preferences

• Select Accounts and click the Login Items button. The system will come up with the list of the items that launch when the box is started up. Locate Similar Photo Cleaner there and click on the “-“ button

Malicious entry under Login Items

Use automatic tool to uninstall Similar Photo Cleaner virus from your Mac

The Mac maintenance and security app called Combo Cleaner is a one-stop tool to detect and remove Similar Photo Cleaner virus virus. This technique has substantial benefits over manual cleanup, because the utility gets hourly virus definition updates and can accurately spot even the newest Mac infections.

Furthermore, the automatic solution will find the core files of the malware deep down the system structure, which might otherwise be a challenge to locate. Here’s a walkthrough to sort out the Similar Photo Cleaner virus issue using Combo Cleaner:

  1. Download Combo Cleaner installer. When done, double-click the combocleaner.dmg file and follow the prompts to install the tool onto your Mac.

    Download Combo Cleaner

    By downloading any applications recommended on this website you agree to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. The free scanner checks whether your Mac is infected. To get rid of malware, you need to purchase the Premium version of Combo Cleaner.

  2. Open the app from your Launchpad and let it run an update of the malware signature database to make sure it can identify the latest threats.
  3. Click the Start Combo Scan button to check your Mac for malicious activity as well as performance issues.

    Combo Cleaner Mac scan progress

  4. Examine the scan results. If the report says “No Threats”, then you are on the right track with the manual cleaning and can safely proceed to tidy up the web browser that may continue to act up due to the after-effects of the malware attack (see instructions above).

    Combo Cleaner scan report – no threats found

  5. In case Combo Cleaner has detected malicious code, click the Remove Selected Items button and have the utility remove Similar Photo Cleaner virus threat along with any other viruses, PUPs (potentially unwanted programs), or junk files that don’t belong on your Mac.

    Combo Cleaner – threats found

  6. Once you have made doubly sure that the malicious app is uninstalled, the browser-level troubleshooting might still be on your to-do list. If your preferred browser is affected, resort to the previous section of this tutorial to revert to hassle-free web surfing.
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