A computer game doesn’t have to be super-sophisticated and graphically complex to go viral. The truth is, people adore digital experiences with cute animals at their core, even if the code foundation appears to be primitive. It comes as no surprise that the relatively new Desktop Goose game has gained tremendous traction around the world in literally a few weeks. However, this awesomeness may be a slippery slope, causing a Mac to slow down dramatically and get out of hand.

Mac adware has seen a huge spike in early 2020 and the trend keeps making itself felt. Whilst there are numerous active families of these threats, one of them is literally swarming into the wild with spinoffs that are replicas of one another, for the most part. CrowdExclusive is an app that represents this syndicate. It displays annoying ads on websites and may redirect the browser to a fake search engine or junk services, making the victim stuck in unwanted web traffic.

Malicious apps that diminish a Mac user’s Internet surfing experience through browser hijacking are growingly common. Arriving with a harmless-looking software bundle, such an infection will impose rogue web preferences to make the victim visit an unwanted junk site over and over. Feed Chunk App is a typical threat falling into this malware cluster. It redirects the traffic to feed.chunckapp.com page to push another notorious virus-riddled service called Safe Finder.

Falling victim to a browser hijacker is both a nuisance in terms of the symptoms and a drag when it comes to the fix. Although these threats don’t really damage anything on a Mac, they sprinkle their numerous components around the system to prevent accurate detection and effective removal. Binarymove is the name of a new adware strain that skews one’s web browsing defaults and redirects the traffic to junk and malicious sites without taking the user approval route.

Plug-ins can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they enable a bevy of features so that Mac users aren’t limited in their activities and the range of online materials they can view and access. On the other hand, though, a plug-in can be a weak link in one’s security set-up if it’s crudely designed or heavily targeted by malicious actors. To keep users safe, Apple may disable such known-vulnerable entities, displaying “Blocked Plug-in” alerts. These messages can also be shown by malware to tout additional infections.

Browser-centric malware is taking the Mac world by storm. Rather than combat top-notch infections that utilize complex persistence techniques, the victims seem to be faced with the prosaic need for trashing some mischievous plugin and rectifying their Internet settings. Although this looks like good news and no big deal, the irritation caused by browser hijackers like SearchMine is huge, plus the cleanup isn’t as easy as it may appear.