MACDefender Malware Now Accounts for 50% of AppleCare Support Calls?

A rogue anti-malware program called MACDefender is reportedly starting to spread and may now account for 50% of AppleCare support calls, according to a ZDNet report.

Ed Bott from ZDNet was recently criticized by Daring Fireball's John Gruber for his warnings that serious malware is coming to the Mac. Bott has since managed get an interview with an AppleCare support representative who states the situation is dire.

There's usually about 600 or so of us spread around 14 centers for CPU support. Before this started happening, we had 7-12 minutes between calls generally. Now we're lucky to have any time between calls.

We started getting a trickle of calls a couple weeks ago. However, this last week over 50% of our calls have been about it. In two days last week I personally took 60 calls that referred to Mac Defender.

The support representation says that Apple has instructed them not to help customers calling with the malware problem but instead to direct them to various anti-virus companies that offer a solution. The reason being that while MACDefender may be easy to remove, Apple doesn't want to establish the precedent that they will be able to provide this type of support in the future. The representative says some representatives do assist customers at their own risk.

Botts notes that there are 200 discussion threads on Apple's support forums regarding this issue since April 30th, 43 of which were started last weekend.

Read More [via MacRumors]