How To Remove Fake Flash Player Update From Mac OS

What is Fake Flash Player Update?

Fake Flash Player Update may appear like legitimate update recommendations of Flash Player. So, it is difficult to recognize it. These fake warnings are triggered by some malicious links or pages that further redirects to landing page showing the pop-up warning.

The pop-up warning presented by such pages states to update the Flash Player as it is outdated. However, this may not true, so before clicking on “update” button, you should on the Mac store for any recent update available.

“Adobe Flash Player” is out of date
To continue using “Adobe Flash Player”, download an updated version.

Most importantly, users should know that Adobe will no longer support the Flash Player and will block the flash content from running within the player. So, better to avoid installing or updating it.

Why Adware authors are using Fake Flash Player update tactics to distribute Adware?

Flash Player is required to play the flash content on websites. So, if flash is not active or outdated, you may able to access that part of content while visiting the website. Thus, it is quite easier for the bad actors to use scam tactics by showing a pop-up warning to update the flash. The moment you click on the “Update“, it will guide you through the steps to install it. Well, Mac warns users whenever you may attempt to install any software from third-party or unsafe sites. But often we ignore such warnings and quickly install them.

The installer will download a .dmg file and install on your Mac. Soon after that, you may notice adware or potentially unwanted program getting active. As such unknown extension can get installed on your Mac, default search engine may be replaced by some unknown one like searchmine.net, cill-tab.com, trovi.com and so on.

These are meant to display ads in order to generate their revenue, hijack the searches to show sponsored results rather than organic ones and so on.

So, if you have recently noticed Fake Flash Player Update on your Mac, then here is all what you should do.

How To Remove Fake Flash Player Update From Mac

If your Mac is already infected with adware programs, then you can remove this program by following the below steps.

How To Remove Fake Flash Player Update From Mac Manually

To completely remove Fake Flash Player Update from Mac, follow these steps  carefully: 

1Remove Fake Flash Player Update, PUA and other Malicious Software

1. On the Finder window, click Go→ Applications;

   

2. Look through the Application window to find and remove Malicious Software;

   

3. To remove Fake Flash Player Update from Mac, right-click on it and choose “Move To Trash”;
4. After that, Click on the “Empty Trash” by right-click on the Trash icon on your dock.

   

5. Restart your Mac to make changes into effect.

2Remove LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons Associated With Fake Flash Player Update

To Remove Fake Flash Player Update LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemon, follow the steps here: 

1. Open Finder window and then select: Go → Go to Folder;

   

2. Now, you need find any malicious agents related to Fake Flash Player Update within the following locations, and delete if find any;
   • /Library/LaunchAgents
   • /Library/LaunchDaemons
   • /System/Library/LaunchAgents
   • /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
   • ~/Library/LaunchAgents
3. Enter the path to the “Go To Folder” and click “Go”;

   

4. Now, check, if there is any Fake Flash Player Update related entries, if found delete them one-by-one.

   

3Remove Fake Flash Player Update Related Fake Profiles

Often malicious programs like Safe Finder, Search Mine, Advanced Mac Cleaner leverages this setting to configure profile settings that connect to specific URL, restrict removal and so on. Thus, you should check for any profile configuration created by malicious programs. So you need to find and remove fake profiles.

To do so, you must login to your Mac as administrative account. By deleting the malicious profiles , you will be able to make changes to restricted settings.

• Choose Apple menu→ System Preferences → Profiles .
  Note: If there is no profiles on your Mac, then you may not see the profile icon. Then skip to the next step.
• Once the profile Windows opens, check for unknown Profile.

  

• To Remove fake Flash Player Update Profile created by adware or malicious software, select it and click the Remove button (—) minus button in the bottom.

4Uninstall Fake Flash Player Update Related Extensions From Web browsers

Next, step is to find unwanted extension, fake search engine and revoke other settings that happens due to any Adware. So, most of the users use Safari, Chrome and Mozilla browsers on their Mac OS.

So, here we are going to explain all the three one-by-one.

Scan Your Mac With Combo Cleaner To Remove Fake Flash Player Update

• Follow the link to Download Combo Cleaner“;
• A .dmg file will download, double-click on it to start installation process;
• Once you see the below window, drag and drop the Combo Cleaner icon to your “Applications folder”;

  

•  Click on the “Combo Cleaner” icon from the “Launchpad” on your dock;

  

• Follow the on-screen instruction to finish the setup. The combo cleaner will quickly update its Virus database. After which, Combo cleaner will launch the program;

  

• You can either click on “Start Combo Scan” or click on the “Antivirus” tab and choose various scan options. There are 3 scan options: Quick, Full, and custom. (We will recommend to do full scan for first time)

  

• After the scan completes, it will show the threats if found. So, click on “Remove All Threats”;

  

• Next, go to “Uninstaller” Tab to find and remove malicious extensions and other programs from web browsers and Mac. Select unwanted program and also their related files and then click on “Remove Selected Items“

  

So, this is how to remove Fake Flash Player Update from your Mac.