MacKeeper threatens 14-year-old YouTube video maker with harassment suit

Infamous software developer MacKeeper has demanded that four videos critical of its maligned tune-up utility suite be removed from the internet, threatening the teenager behind the videos with $60,000 in court costs and legal fees.

Luqman Wadood, the creator of the video series, made a set of five videos, which he calls the "MacKeeper Sucks" and "MacKeeper is a scam" series. Since MacKeeper owner Kromtech's legal threat, four videos in the set have been made private, with one video, called "Confronting MacKeeper" remaining viewable.

Wadood published a video on July 4, addressing the situation, admitting to having prank called MacKeeper in the past. Regardless, he claims that he has gone through the videos that Kromtech has taken issue to "frame by frame" and has decided that "there was nothing that was illegal" in any of the videos.

The four videos that Kromtech name in the legal complaint are "MacKeeper (busted)" part one and two, "Trolling MacKeeper (again)", and "Trolling MacKeeper (once again)." The videos span a time period from December 4, 2015 through April 27, 2016. The "Confronting MacKeeper" video was published on December 4, 2015, the same as the first video from Wadood.

As one video critical of the company is still publicly available, it is unclear if Wadood's shifting the four accused videos to private will forestall the suit. Wadood signaled he is willing to head to Norwegian court to settle the matter.

In August 2015, ZeoBIT, creators of MacKeeper, agreed to a settlement in 2015 to put $2 million in a compensation fund to cover attorney fees, refunds and administrative costs to U.S class action claimants who purchased MacKeeper prior to July 8, 2015.

The complaint alleged that "ZeoBIT intentionally designed MacKeeper to invariably and ominously report that a user's Mac needs repair, and is at-risk due to harmful (but fabricated) errors, privacy threats, and other computer problems, regardless of the computer's actual condition." Court documents state that 513,330 people are registered owners of the software in the U.S.

New parent firm Kromtech has supposedly abandoned the aggressive advertisement that was noted in the suit, and has claimed to have made efforts to cut down on ads from affiliates claiming that a computer displaying the ad is infected by some form of malware. Current MacKeeper owners Kromtech Alliance were not named in the suit. No fault was admitted in the settlement.

Additionally, in December 2015, the MacKeeper user database was breached, with 13 million records stolen that contained the user base's names, email addresses, phone numbers, poorly-hashed passwords, and details on computer hardware. The customer databases have since been secured by Kromtech.

Neither Wadood nor Kromtech have responded to AppleInsider's queries on the lawsuit.