Formlist PUA on Mac
Formlist is the name of a Mac application that advertises itself as a tool that can enhance your browsing and Internet searches. In reality, Formlist shares features with adware, browser hijackers and potentially unwanted applications.
Potentially unwanted applications are a type of software that, while not being outright malware and not posing an immediate high threat to your system's health, will usually impair your user experience, whether this is by collecting data without consent, injecting ads in your browsing or quietly switching default search engines and home pages in your browsers.
Once Formlist or a similar application has made its way on your Mac, you may start seeing a lot of unusual advertisements in pages and locations you visited before and there were none. This includes invitations for surveys, often with alleged rewards, coupon offers and ad banners of all kinds.
The issue with those is that they will usually lead you to sites that are not reliable. In a lot of cases, those referrals will serve up additional potentially unwanted applications or even full-blown malware.
Additionally, potentially unwanted apps like Formlist may collect information about your browsing history and habits. This data can potentially be resold to third parties to generate revenue and when all of this is happening without the user's explicit consent, this is an issue.
Potentially unwanted apps usually end up on your system through bundle installers, often called just 'bundlers'. Those are software packages that include multiple apps, with one of them usually being a legitimate app. However, the bundle installers have notoriously poor disclosure of their full contents and often PUAs end up on your system without your explicit consent and full knowledge, piggy-backing in the same package and installing quietly.
To avoid running into similar applications and potential headaches, you should always source your applications and installers from trustworthy websites that have proper curation of their content. Those include the official App Store and the official website of an app or its developer and publisher.