McAfee Stinger Removed From App Directory Due to Malware-Like Behavior

McAfee Stinger has been removed from the Portable App Directory due to malware-like behavior. Running the current releases of McAfee Stinger on any Windows PC will automatically install the 'McAfee Validation Trust Protection Service' (mfevtps.exe) to the local machine without a prominent notice to the user. There is a reference to it only buried in the EULA. Once installed, these files are exceedingly difficult to remove. No entry is made in Add/Remove Programs or Uninstall a Program, a service is installed and set to automatically start with Windows, the service can not be Stopped by the end user. This behavior is unacceptable from any application, portable or not. It should be noted that the service left behind does not appear to do anything nefarious to the local machine. It could simply be an error by the publisher, but it has not been addressed since it began occurring a couple weeks ago.

While you can start the machine in safe mode and manually remove the files, the best way to ensure that all files are fully removed is to use the McAfee MPCR cleanup tool. Note that this tool is designed to fully remove all McAfee products from a Windows machine after their uninstallers have failed to properly remove them, so it should be used with care.

We apologize for any inconvenience the above issue may cause users and the loss of the app. This sudden change in app behavior due to the publisher's changes was as much a surprise to us as to you. Any support issues should be directed to the publisher.