Mactorrent.co Pop-Ups - How to remove

Mactorrent.co is a torrenting site that shows a lot of pop-up ads. There are risks associated with downloading torrents and with allowing a site like Mactorrent.co to spam your screen with ads – scam websites, adware infections, and similar problems. So, be careful about using Mactorrent.co or another pirating site and protect your Mac by making backups of your files and protecting your online accounts.

Mactorrent.co in short:

Threat type	Adware.
Problems with torrenting	It can be used to illegally download programs and other content, this content can be infected with adware and other malware.
Ads shown by Mactorrent.co	Mactorrent.co shows ads that interrupt web browsing, some of its ads lead to potentially unwanted or even dangerous sites.
How to stay safe on Mactorrent.co	Block ads on websites that show too many, check the files that you download with antivirus programs, protect your Mac with antivirus scanners (Combo Cleaner, Malwarebytes, others), protect your files by making regular backups.

Is Mactorrent.co dangerous?

The risk of infected torrents

Mactorrent.co is a torrenting site – it catalogs torrents that you can use to download various files, mostly various applications. The torrent files need a torrent client to download. Torrent clients are often detected by anti-malware programs as risky to use for two reasons:

• torrents are often used to download files illegally, which is not something that antivirus vendors want to encourage,
• pirated files are sometimes modified to include adware and other malicious items.

Torrenting is risky, but Mactorrent.co is a pretty popular site, estimated to get almost half a million visits each month. So, it’s unlikely to include many infected files. Still, torrenting is a popular way to spread malware – even to Macs.

Infected torrented software is most likely to include spyware (logs your data, such as login credentials saved in browsers) and adware (shows ads, but can also hijack your internet connection), but there’s no limit to what kind of malware could be included. Besides, Mactorrent.co does allow users to upload their own torrents, which adds some more risk.

Dangerous ads

But the biggest problem with Mactorrent.co is that it shows obnoxious ads. When you visit the site, it doesn’t look like it has any advertisements – but it opens new browser tabs with promoted sites when you click on the page. This is pretty normal for torrenting sites, like Torrentmac.net, and other pirating sites. Unfortunately, such ads can be annoying or even genuinely dangerous:

• gaming, gambling ads, explicit content, and other adult-oriented content that might not be suitable for children,
• ads that lead to unwanted programs and browser extensions (web traffic hijackers, search hijackers, advertising malware, fake antivirus apps, etc.),
• pages that show fake virus warnings, fake update alerts, and other fake ads that cause a lot of unnecessary stress,
• fake articles and surveys that promote get-rich-quick schemes.

If you visit pirating sites often, it’s recommended to block ads on such sites – it will help you stay safe. As Mactorrent.co keeps showing ads that interrupt your browsing, blocking them will also make the browsing much smoother.

How to stay safe on Mactorrent.co

Mactorrent.co and similar sites tend to show a lot of ads, both dangerous and annoying. You can use ad blockers to protect yourself. Ad blockers might make it harder to use the site – Mactorrent.co might block you and tell you to disable your ad blocker, but you can just ask for help on the support forums of your ad blockers.

Better yet, avoid using Mactorrent.co or other pirating sites. When possible, use legal websites, preferably original developer sites. When possible, seek out free (such as open-source) software. Cracked and otherwise pirated apps are somewhat likely to be infected with adware and to try to install spyware on your device.

It’s also advisable to use anti-malware applications to block malicious sites and files. The torrent files that you can get on Mactorrent.co are not dangerous, but the files downloaded via the torrents can be infected and it’s important to always be careful. Use an anti-malware app that you trust, such as Combo Cleaner, Malwarebytes, or others.

Another good way to protect yourself from infected files is to make backups of your data. Apple gives you Time Machine for this purpose and it can help you recover from serious infections.

To protect your online accounts against spyware infections, just make sure to use 2-factor authentication.

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