
Mostly. It seems like a couple of them have recently slipped trough though. According to https://9to5mac.com they come from a developer that claims to be a rather big popular security company. Claims like that make sure that users will be more open to trust “shady” apps and not question what they are doing too much.
The apps in question are Dr. Unarchiver and Dr. Cleaner amongst others. While the first one is supposed to unzip files, the second one cleans up your Mac and iPhones. They perform their tasks well enough but also do other work in the background – a lot more than you’d be comfortable with actually.
According to 9to5mac they collect and upload a lot of data to the company’s server, including the full browser history for Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox, separate files specifically dedicated to storing the user’s recent Google searches on the same browsers and a file containing a complete list of all apps installed on the system, including information about where they were downloaded from, whether they are 64-bit compatible and their code signature.
That’s a lot of information that most users would probably not be comfortable sharing with anyone. Even worse: Dr. Unarchiver” is one of the top 15 most popular free app in the US Mac App Store. That’s a lot of data from a lot of users.
As so often there are good news, too: Dr. Unarchiver and Dr. Cleaner have been removed from the Apple App store. That doesn’t mean you should relax and be as careless as before. Apple is secure, yes, but there are of course always exceptions. Those exceptions are where it gets hairy. While Windows users are always prepared for something like this to happen, have installed Antivirus tools, and are generally more suspicious, this is something that might not come as natural to their Mac counterparts.
We can only advice you to be vigilant and only download apps from companies you’d trust and from which you know that they take privacy very seriously.