A friend of mine asked me to inspect her computer a while ago as she suspected that she may have some virus trouble.
In part of my initial check of her computer (MacBook Pro OS X, probably Mavericks) I found 3 applications in the Applications folder, which according to her: "spontaneously appeared".
These applications included Microsoft Silverlight, MacKeeper and some other arbitrary media player, and after a small amount of research, I found that they may in fact be malicious software (adware, spyware or malware) so I promptly uninstalled them:
Problem solved.
My question is:
- Can Applications just "Appear" in the Applications folder without User interaction/authentication?
She insists that she did not install them or give any authentication surrounding them that she remembers, which is extremely unusual as I would not expect programs to have that degree of access without user interaction.
Does anyone have any ideas?