MacScan is a relatively new security software program from SecureMac.com, which is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. It’s somewhat similar to Smith Micro Software’s Internet Cleanup 4. What MacScan can do for you is to find what they call spyware. It will scan your hard disk and check if there are suspicious files.

MacScan is a small program. When you launch MacScan, you will see four tabs at the top after clearing the message that asks you if you want to run it in ‘authenticated mode.’ If you open its Preferences, there are just two checkable options. (See Screenshot 03.)

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Anyway, we assigned a task to MacScan. As described in our SEO blog article, we have found an SWF banner, which, we suspect, caused a spam banner replacement at Demonoid the other day. We were looking for a security program that could help us find hidden data leading to a spam website run by DriverCleaner.

Unlike Internet Cleaner, MacScan runs on a specific volume, which is very nice. Otherwise, the scanning process could go on for several hours. So I chose the tab labeled Scan and then clicked on Custom Scan. (See Screenshot 04.) After selecting the right volume, I clicked on the Scan button. Well, I don’t know if it scanned the volume that I selected. It was running on a particular user account folder. (See Screenshot 05.) Then MacScan said that it found 25 spyware files. Oh, great. What are those? They are actually just tracking cookies, all 25 of them. It doesn’t bother us that we have tracking cookies installed in our web browsers.

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So what else does MacScan do? If you click on the Web Files tab, you will see 9 web browsers listed at the top. And there are four options to choose from. (See Screenshot 07.) Wait! You can delete cookies and a history log for yourself on individual web browsers, right? That’s not a unique function at all. All right. How about the Info tab? I hoped to see something interesting. Hmm… It’s just a list of known spyware. (See Screenshot 08.)

Screenshot 07

Screenshot 08

After all, we didn’t find any useful functions with MacScan. Actually, MacScan doesn’t have many functions. It only scans your hard disk and lets you delete some files associated with web browsers.

MacHouse recommendation: We don’t see any value in MacScan at all. Don’t buy it. Although it hasn’t been updated for 14 months, Smith Micro Software’s Internet Cleanup 4 is a better anti-spyware program. And the prices are pretty much the same. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we are recommending Mac users to use Internet Cleanup 4.






Click on the button to download the suspicious SWF banner from MonsterMarketplace.com.






MacScan is a product of SecureMac.com, Inc.

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