Computer hack recovery on MacBook Pro and recovery...

Norton is a horrible anti-virus software as it eats up system resources, and is difficult to remove.

McAfee is not necessary.

Malwarebytes and Avast both can be downloaded and manually run for free, but even better is combining EasyFind from

Devontechnology and Etrecheck and Reggie Answorth AppDelete. These do not affect your performance in the slightest and give you direct knowledge of what's eating your processing power and help you remove it directly, while booted in safe mode (holding shift key at startup).

Do not call the number.

Command-Option-Escape for quit every open application.

When you reopen any web browser, hold the shift key to be given the option to load no page at startup, to avoid getting the message.

If you did call the number, make sure you did not give personal information.

If you gave personal information such as bank, credit card numbers, or anything tied to your financial interests, call your institutions right away and have them change your account numbers that might be affected.

Never ever respond to popups directly.

MacKeeper by the way, is a malware, even though it is able to be downloaded from the App Store, it does ruin launch services and can slow your Mac down. Be sure to give it a negative review in the App Store, it should have never been allowed on, and people that know never download it so they don't even have the chance to review it.

a brody wrote:

Malwarebytes and Avast both can be downloaded and manually run for free

I suggest avoiding Avast as well since it has been the cause of a lot of user issues with macOS as reported on these forums. Plus Avast has been caught twice selling users' personal information (unfortunately I cannot find the article for the second occurrence...it happened pretty close together if I recall). Plus Avast has just been sold to Norton Life Lock.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/avast-kills-off-jumpshot-the-subsidiary-that-sold-all-your-web-data/

https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-cost-of-avasts-free-antivirus-companies-can-spy-on-your-clicks

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/02/uk-clears-8-1b-merger-between-nortonlifelock-and-avast/

Except for MalwareBytes, I would avoid all anti-virus apps these days regardless of the OS being used (even Windows has its own built-in anti-virus these days which is sufficient for Windows). The anti-virus software industry has been consolidated to a few players now with very terrible product support since there is very little real competition. It is no longer about the actual product being sold. The user is the product being sold to advertisers and other data collection agencies.

Edit: If MalwareBytes and EtreCheck cannot help to resolve a problem, then performing a clean install of the OS and restoring only the data is the best safest way forward.