All your devices need antivirus protection, not just PCs running Windows. It makes sense, then, to choose an antivirus that works on all the common platforms, and even more sense to pick one that doesn’t limit how many devices you can protect. McAfee AntiVirus Plus is exactly that sort of solution, which is just what a multi-device household needs.
Installed on Windows, it offers many features beyond mere antivirus, though several of them are slated for removal. The completely revamped mobile apps have also sloughed off quite a few features. This change is in line with McAfee’s new emphasis on protecting your identity over your devices, but you don’t get the full benefit of that focus until you reach the company’s security suite products. Still, McAfee AntiVirus Plus protects all your devices, and it does an excellent job, making it an Editors’ Choice pick for antivirus protection.
You pay $64.99 per year for unlimited McAfee licenses, up five bucks from its long-time price of $59.99. That means you can install protection on every device in your household. McAfee has long supported Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. The current edition adds protection for ChromeOS devices and ARM-based laptops. Trend Micro Maximum Security is among the few other security products boasting support for ChromeOS.
You may see descriptions on the McAfee website or on product boxes that mention 10 licenses. Don’t worry: You really do get unlimited licenses. My McAfee contacts tell me that when lining up against other product boxes in a store, “unlimited” confuses some customers, so they display the number 10 instead.
Unlimited licensing is rare. Most competing companies offer one-, three-, five-, or 10-license subscriptions. For example, a slightly lower subscription price than McAfee’s gets you 10 Sophos licenses, three licenses for Bitdefender, ESET NOD32 Antivirus, or Kaspersky Anti-Virus, and just one Norton license. Roughly $40 per month gets you a one-device license for many antivirus products, among them Bitdefender, Webroot, and Trend Micro. With unlimited licenses, McAfee’s pricing has them all beat.
Of course, with a free antivirus you effectively have an unlimited license. For example, Avast One Essential, a stripped-down version of Avast One, costs nothing and protects all four popular platforms.
To install McAfee, you first go online and activate your license key. If you configure your account for automatic renewal, you get a Virus Protection Pledge from McAfee. That means if any malware gets past the antivirus, McAfee experts promise to remotely remediate the problem, a service that normally costs $89.95. In the unlikely event that the experts can’t clear out the malware, the company refunds your purchase price. Norton offers a similar promise, as does Check Point ZoneAlarm Extreme Security.
With that housekeeping out of the way, it’s time to download and install the product. I am pleased that the installer didn’t require hand-holding from me. Once installation is complete, the product starts protecting you right away. I did run into a glitch in testing, a problem my McAfee contacts tracked down to an interaction with my Comcast Xfinity ISP. The only way I could complete the installation was to perform it while connected through a VPN, which isn’t great.
Since the selloff of its enterprise business unit, McAfee is a purely consumer-focused company. Its designers and planners take that focus very seriously. McAfee AntiVirus Plus got a complete makeover to support that new focus, and it has changed again since my last review. A banner at the top of the main window still provides useful information about recent activities or actions that are needed. Below that, instead of three panels for PC, Web, and Identity, you now see six panels.These are Check your Protection Score, Antivirus, Tracker Remover, Protect More Devices, Browser Security, and Secure Apps.
Down the left side of the main window is a simple set of icons for Home, My Protection, Protection Score, Account, Help, Settings, and Feedback. I’ll discuss the Protection Score system below. Clicking My Protection opens a menu of all available protection features.
Since my last review, the mobile apps for Android and iOS have received a similar makeover. They’ve integrated McAfee’s protection into one app rather than three. As for Mac users, well, they’re stuck with the old interface for now. My company contacts say that an update is planned, but it’s not a high priority.
I follow four independent antivirus testing labs that regularly publish reports on their findings. Three of the four currently include McAfee when they round up products for testing, which is a good sign. It means that they consider it a significant product, worthy of their testing efforts. McAfee’s test scores range from perfect to merely good.
Testing experts at AV-Test Institute rate antivirus products on how well they protect against malware, how light a touch they have on performance, and how little they interfere with usability by wrongly flagging valid programs and websites as malicious. An antivirus can earn six points each for Protection, Performance, and Usability, for a maximum of 18 points. McAfee earns that top score in this lab’s latest test. But then, more than two thirds of the tested products hit that mark, among them Avast, Kaspersky, and Norton AntiVirus Plus.
Researchers at SE Labs use a capture and replay system to challenge multiple antivirus tools with identical web-based attacks. Products can earn certification at five levels, AAA, AA, A, B, and C. In the latest round of testing, all the tested products receive AAA certification, McAfee among them. Other products that reach the AAA level include Microsoft, Norton, and Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus.
AV-Comparatives regularly publishes a variety of tests; we follow three of them. Products that pass a test receive Standard certification. Those that achieve exceptional success can earn an Advanced or Advanced+ rating. McAfee earns one Standard and two Advanced+ certifications, the same as Norton. Avast, AVG, and Bitdefender Antivirus Plus are the only products that hold an Advanced+ rating in the latest reports from all three tests.
I’ve devised an algorithm that maps all the lab scores to a 10-point scale and yields an aggregate lab score from 0 to 10. McAfee’s aggregate score of 9.7 is quite good. Among products tested by three labs, Kaspersky does a bit better, with 9.8 points, while AVG and Bitdefender own a perfect 10. The top score among the few products tested by all four labs goes to Avast, with 9.6 points.
In addition to checking results from the independent testing labs around the world, I put every antivirus product through my own hands-on malware protection testing. Some products I test don’t show up in reports from any of the labs, making hands-on tests essential. Even for a product like McAfee, tested by three labs, this process gives me a chance to experience antivirus protection in action.
I start by opening a folder containing a collection of malware samples that I have collected and manually analyzed, so I know just what damage they can do. For many antivirus products, the minimal access that occurs when Windows Explorer checks the file’s name, size, and so on is enough to trigger an on-access scan. McAfee doesn’t scan until the sample launches, so I had to launch each one and watch its reaction.
Tested with the newest malware collection, McAfee caught almost all the samples immediately on launch. In most cases, I saw a Windows error message flash past, followed by a notification that McAfee quarantined a threat. It caught the remaining samples after launch, though it didn’t perfectly block one installation. With 98% detection and 9.7 of 10 points, McAfee beat out almost every other product tested with the current sample set. G Data Antivirus and ZoneAlarm squeaked higher with 9.8 points, and Norton leads with 9.9.
It takes a long time to collect, curate, and analyze a new set of samples, so I don’t change to a new set often. For a view on how antivirus products handle current in-the-wild malware, I use a feed of the latest discoveries from MRG-Effitas. This feed is simply a list of malware-hosting URLs discovered in the wild over the last few days. I feed the list into a small program that launches each URL and makes it easy to record whether the antivirus blocked access to the URL, eliminated the malware download, or did nothing.
McAfee’s WebAdvisor component blocked 10% of the URLs, in several ways. It diverted the browser to a warning page for some, calling them either Risky or Suspicious. For others, it stopped the browser from opening at all, popping up a warning that it “caught something trying to hijack one of your apps.”
The other 90% reached the download stage, at which point McAfee slid a banner into the browser announcing its intention of scanning the download, “just to be safe.” In a very few cases, it asked permission to block a download that looks dangerous—I always gave it permission. Overall, McAfee blocked 83% of the URLs at the download stage, for a total of 93%.
That sounds pretty good, but in numerous previous tests McAfee has frequently reached 100%. Tested with the same set of URLs, Norton also dropped from 100%, with a score of 94%. The top scorers in their latest malicious download tests are Sophos, Trend Micro, and ZoneAlarm, all with 100% protection.
After installing a new antivirus, you should always run a full scan. The time for that initial scan varies quite a bit. This time around, McAfee needed two hours and 53 minutes to complete its initial full scan, the slowest time among current products and more than twice the current average. That’s no surprise—it took well over two hours last time I tested it. Optimization during that initial scan allowed a repeat scan to finish just a little faster, two hours and 16 minutes.
Most competing products required less time for the initial scan, and many gained even more speed in a repeat scan. Trend Micro went from 93 minutes to three minutes, for example, and a second scan with Vipre Antivirus Plus finished in 16 minutes, down from 100 minutes for the first scan.
In theory you only need that drawn-out full scan once, as real-time antivirus should handle new threats. However, as a second tier of protection McAfee schedules a full scan every other week. You can switch to scanning once a week or once a month, or you can create your own custom schedule.
Devising a Trojan for stealing user account credentials requires a malware coder to invent techniques for slipping past layers of antivirus protection and the operating system’s own security features. That’s no easy task, and it’s just the start. The Trojan still needs code to locate those credentials and phone them home. It’s a lot easier to just hoodwink the user into giving away their credentials. Not only that, phishing is platform-agnostic. Any device that has a browser, be it a Chromebook or a gaming console, can be your downfall. And even if you’re well-trained in spotting these scams, it just takes one lapse.
Phishing fraudsters create sites that masquerade as sensitive sites and spread links through spam, malicious ads, and the like. Bank sites, online gaming, dating sites—no secure site is immune. If you log in to the fraudulent website, you’ve handed your account over to the fraudsters. Such sites quickly wind up blacklisted, but the malefactors simply pop up new ones.
Because phishing pages are ephemeral, I test using the very newest reported phishing sites, scraped from websites that track them. In addition to known and verified frauds, I make sure to include those that have been reported but haven’t yet gone through analysis. This puts pressure on the antivirus to heuristically examine web pages and detect frauds without relying on an always-outdated blacklist.
I launch each URL simultaneously in four browsers, starting with one protected by the product in testing. The other three depend on protection built into Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. I run through hundreds of reported phishing URLs, discarding any that one or more of the browsers can’t reach, and any that aren’t verifiable credential-stealing frauds.
I had a rare opportunity to test several products, both Windows and macOS, with precisely the same set of phishing URLs. McAfee dropped from its previous 100% score to a decent 94%, while Avira moved up from 91% to 96%. At the top of the list, we find Bitdefender, Trend Micro, and ZoneAlarm, all with 100% detection in their latest tests.
I also ran my phishing test on McAfee’s macOS edition at the same time. This one is clearly not running the same code as the Windows version. It scored a bit better, 97%, but the handling of frauds and the distribution of missed samples was decidedly different. And when it steers the user away from a phishing fraud, the resulting information page is just broken, with no useful information.
McAfee’s ransomware protection component doesn’t have any visible presence. It’s just another layer of real-time protection. According to McAfee, if regular protection doesn’t recognize a brand-new ransomware attack, the antivirus watches its behavior. At the first faint sign of an attempt to encrypt files (what McAfee calls “file content transformation”), it makes protected copies of those files and cranks up its vigilance. When it reaches a firm decision that the program is truly ransomware, it quarantines it and restores the files from backup. Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security does something similar.
When possible, I simulate the zero-day possibility by turning off real-time protection, leaving only the ransomware component active. But as with Trend Micro, turning off real-time protection also disables the ransomware component.
I keep hand-modified versions of every sample, to test the flexibility of on-sight malware recognition. However, McAfee blocked all the modified versions too. I created a new set of tweaked samples, slightly different from the previous set and thus never precisely seen before. Out of a dozen samples, McAfee caught four as ransomware, one of those by name. It caught another seven as generic malware. And yes, that leaves one that it totally missed. The ransomware tore through my test system, encrypting everything from the contents of the Documents folder to shortcuts on the desktop. That was a surprise.
I turned to KnowBe4’s RanSim, a ransomware simulator, for another take on McAfee’s ransomware-fighting skills. This tool runs 10 scenarios that emulate common ransomware behaviors, along with two benign encryption techniques. McAfee initially quarantined RanSim’s launcher and data collection components. I restored them, added them to the exclusions list, and tried again, but apparently the exclusion list doesn’t apply to the component that reports “We stopped something dangerous.” Finding that I can’t run RanSim due to antivirus protection is common.
In this simple test, McAfee demonstrated that it can recognize ransomware as such, though more often it just tags it as generic malware. The fact that it missed one tweaked sample even with all antivirus components active is worrying, though.
Most security companies reserve firewall protection for the full-blown security suite, but McAfee puts it right in the standalone antivirus. In testing, the firewall correctly stealthed all ports and resisted the web-based attacks we threw at it. Since the built-in Window Firewall can do the same, this test is only significant if a third-party firewall fails it.
Those of us who’ve been around long enough remember the early personal firewalls, with their maddening, incomprehensible queries. SpecialMaster.exe wants to connect to URL 104.18.253.68 on port 8080; allow or block? Once or always? Consumers just aren’t qualified to answer those questions. Some always allow access. Others always click block, until they break something, at which point they switch to allow. It’s not an effective system.
Like Norton, Bitdefender, and others, McAfee doesn’t rely on the untrained user to make these decisions. In its default Smart Access mode, the firewall decides for itself. If you get nostalgic for pop-ups, you can dig into the settings and change Smart Access to Monitored Access. Don’t do it. Yes, there are tons of ways to configure and fine-tune the firewall, but the average user should just leave them alone.
Not being an average user, I did play with some of the settings. I turned on Monitored Access and noted that the firewall correctly asked what to do when a seriously off-brand browser (one I coded myself) tried to get online. I could block it, allow access once, or allow always. I was mildly surprised to find that it also asked whether to allow access for Opera and Windows Defender SmartScreen, but again, most users should leave this feature alone.
Firewall protection isn’t much use if a malware coder can craft an attack that disables it. As part of regular firewall testing, I attempt to disable protection using techniques that a coder could implement. I didn’t find any way to turn off protection by tweaking the hundreds of keys and thousands of values McAfee adds to the Registry—as far as I can tell, it prevents any modification to its Registry data.
I tried to kill off the software’s 14 processes, but it protected them all. Seven of its essential Windows services were also protected, but I managed to stop and disable the other two, including the WebAdvisor service. Clearly the developers know how to protect processes and services. As I’ve said in numerous previous reviews, why not extend protection to all of them?
Some hackers turn their skills to finding security holes in popular apps or even operating systems and using those holes to create attacks that breach security. Opposing them, software companies patch these security holes as quickly as they can. But the hard work by security defenders does no good unless you, the user, apply those security patches. McAfee’s vulnerability scanner reports on products that need a security update. You reach it by clicking Secure Apps on the home page.
Like Avast One and Avira Total Security Suite, McAfee Antivirus Plus automates the update process when it can. Just click the Install Updates button and sit back. If it can’t automate an installer or two, if you have to manage the update yourself, you’re still better off for the ones it did fix automatically.
But all of that is unimportant, because very soon you won’t have access to this component. According to an informative banner on its page, “Starting in September 2022 this feature will be removed to make room for new types of protection.” The App Boost and Web Boost features, reached by opening the My Protection list from the left menu, are likewise shutting down soon.
McAfee has long boasted a network feature called My Home Network. In years past it included the ability to pair McAfee-equipped computers for remote management, and to identify devices on the network that lacked McAfee protection, though those features have fallen by the wayside. At present, My Home Network is also slated for removal.
It’s understandable that McAfee would choose to remove features that don’t get a lot of use, or that are difficult to maintain. I asked my company contacts just what “new types of protection” would be replacing the departing features, but they weren’t permitted to tell me.
Clicking Browser Security from the main window just brings you to the Web protection page of McAfee’s multi-purpose security report; it’s not a self-contained feature. It seems like a waste of screen real estate devoting a button to this feature.
You get more help from clicking Tracker Remover. Despite the name, this feature is not related to blocking tracker components on web pages. Rather, it cleans up computer and browser items that a snoop could use to profile your behavior. In the system files realm, it can remove temporary files, clear windows history, and eliminate broken shortcuts, among other things. You can let it clear cookies, cache, and history in all your browsers or make individual choices for Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.
When it has finished a scan, it reports how much space you could save by cleaning up. You can dig in for a bit of detail about the kinds of things the scan found, but most users should just continue to the cleanup phase. Note that McAfee automatically schedules Tracker Remover scans, but naturally doesn’t remove anything without your permission.
While WebAdvisor doesn’t appear on the home page, it makes up the biggest and most useful component of McAfee’s web-level protection. You’ve seen that WebAdvisor can steer the browser away from both malware-hosting websites and phishing frauds. The browser extension can also mark up results in popular search engines, letting you see before even clicking whether a site is safe, dangerous, or untested.
By default, McAfee only marks up results obtained using its own Secure Search engine, which it actively advises you to install. If you’d rather keep using Google, or DuckDuckGo, or some other popular engine, you need to make a small settings tweak. Click the toolbar icon for the WebAdvisor extension, click the home icon at top, and scroll down to choose “Tell me if a search result is safe in any search engine.”
WebAdvisor defaults to extending its markup of dangerous sites to popular social media networks. Specifically, it protects Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Reddit, Twitter, and Youtube. You can turn this feature on or off from the same WebAdvisor settings page, but I’d suggest you leave it on.
A ransomware attack is scary and almost violent, like being held for ransom. Cryptojacking is a much more subtle attack. You visit a website, and it coopts your system resources as part of a distributed system that mines for Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency. Bear in mind that there’s nothing illegal about mining for Bitcoin. Mining is where Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies come from. The problem comes when a website or program covertly hijacks your computer’s resources to mine currency for someone else.
Piggybacking on WebAdvisor, the Cryptojacking Blocker keeps these sites from leeching away your resources. It suppresses cryptojacking code when found, and slides in a banner explaining what it did. There is an option to let the site use your resources regardless. Why would you do that? Because there are a few sites that openly use crypto mining for financial support, instead of relying on advertisement revenue.
The My Protection menu is divided into several parts. The Protect your PC section holds seven feature items including access to the firewall and antivirus scans. Under Protect Yourself on the Web, you see Browser Security, Web Boost, and Tracker Remover. It may come as a disappointment when you find that under Protect your identity there’s nothing but a secure deletion File Shredder. In the suite products, there’s a lot more in this category.
Deleting a file in Windows just sends it to the Recycle Bin, where anybody with access to your computer could pull it out. Even when you bypass or empty the bin, your deleted file data remains on your disk, subject to forensic recovery. The File Shredder tool overwrites files before deletion to foil forensic recovery. It offers three shred types, differing in the number of times they overwrite data before deletion. Basic goes for two overwrites, Safe for five, and Complete for a whopping 10 overwrite passes. You can shred the Recycle Bin, or Temporary Internet Files, or any file or folder you really want permanently deleted. As another option, you can right-click any file or folder and choose Shred from the resulting menu. A McAfee icon makes the menu choice easy to find.
Secure deletion is especially important when used in conjunction with a file encryption tool like the File Lock component of McAfee Total Protection. If you don’t thoroughly delete the plaintext originals, they could be recovered using forensic software or hardware. Kaspersky Plus goes farther, automatically offering to shred the originals after an encryption job.
Clicking the circle icon for Protection Score in the left-rail menu opens a page describing that feature, with a link to open McAfee’s Protection Center online. The Protection Score concept is simple. You get a rating from 0 to 1,000 points, with advice on how to improve that rating. McAfee’s studies showed that when users were presented with a simple way to improve their score—and thereby improve their security and identity protection—more than half would take the opportunity.
However, most of the possible improvements are in the realm of identity protection, an area that’s reserved for McAfee’s suite products. After a couple of minor items, I found myself staring at the message, “Hi there! Complete 0 items to improve your score.”
Adding to my confusion, the Protection Center offered links for me to download and install McAfee’s VPN and parental control products. My McAfee contacts confirmed that this is an error, slated for a fix. I’ll revisit Protection Center when I cover McAfee’s suite products.
I’ve written a full and separate review of McAfee AntiVirus Plus for Mac; I’ll refer you to that for details. It’s not truly a different product. You still get protection for all your Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. But you don’t get as many security features on the Mac. As noted, the Windows, Android, and iOS editions had a thorough makeover. My contacts indicate that the Mac edition will eventually get the new look, but that other projects have higher priority.
WebAdvisor on the Mac managed 97% protection against phishing attacks, better than the differently implemented Windows edition. However, WebAdvisor is currently Safari-only and lacks many features that were previously present. In addition, McAfee has no current scores for Mac-specific malware protection from the independent testing labs. For a full evaluation, please read my review.
It’s easy to add a mobile device to your McAfee subscription. Just click the Protect more devices panel in the Windows edition’s main window. You’ll get a list of all the devices currently connected to your McAfee subscription along with a QR code. Snap that code with your Android device and you’re on the way to installing McAfee. You can also choose to send a link via email or SMS, but the QR code makes things easy. As with all Android security products, McAfee requires a passel of permissions, but it helpfully leads you through granting everything necessary.
McAfee on Android has gone through an extensive makeover since my last review. It now feels more like an experience than an app. It offers a steady series of recommendations for getting your security configured and working. Each time you make progress your protection score rises, and you get a congratulatory pop-up with stylized fireworks. Early on, you’ll run a scan, configure Safe Browsing, and enable the VPN. You’ll also scan your Wi-Fi network’s security and optionally add it to the trusted list. And as you go, your Protection Score steadily increases. However, as noted above, you can’t go very far toward raising your protection score without the identity protection elements that are reserved for suite-level products.
Once you’re past the initial onboarding, you’ll find that the app has three icons at the bottom for protection score, services, and settings. The middle choice displays four important security services: Antivirus scan, Secure VPN, Wi-Fi Scan, and Safe Browsing. I’ll discuss these in detail below.
The testers at AV-Test Institute offer Android security apps up to six points each for effective protection, small performance impact, and low false positives. McAfee took the full 18 points in the latest tests, but then, so did all tested products except for Google Play Protect.
Reports from AV-Comparatives list the percentage of Android malware thwarted. Alas, this lab’s latest report didn’t include McAfee. Avira, Bitdefender, G Data, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro scored 100%.
In the past, the testing team at MRG-Effitas reported separately on early detection and on detection at the time of installation. With the latest test there’s a small change. The report’s details indicate percentages for detection during download, detection before install, and detection after install. But the only significant figure is the total percentage missed. If it’s less than 1%, the product passes. AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, ESET, and Malwarebytes didn’t miss anything, while Norton’s miss rate of 0.53% is still a passing grade. As for McAfee, it doesn’t appear in this newest test.
McAfee did earn a perfect score in its one recent test, but Avast and Bitdefender managed a trifecta, perfect scores in all three tests. Avira missed the trifecta by a hundredth of a percentage point. If you want Android antivirus that’s backed by hard testing scores, look to these three.
I was surprised when the installation onboarding process didn’t ask me to prepare for anti-theft protection by giving the app Device Administrator permission. It turns out there’s no need for that permission because the updated app doesn’t include the ability to remotely lock, locate, or wipe a lost or stolen device. You’ll want to configure Android’s built-in features for finding a lost device.
Among the other features that have vanished are: App Lock, which lets you put sensitive apps behind a secondary PIN; Guest Mode, which hides all apps except those you specify (handy for amusing a kid); Storage Cleaner, which gains you storage space by deleting junk files and other unnecessary files; Memory Booster, to free up memory allocated to idle apps; an App Privacy report warning you about any apps that seem to access an undue amount of personal information; and a Battery Booster that takes control of screen brightness and sleep timeouts to save battery.
With all those features gone, you may wonder what’s left. Front and center is the Antivirus Scan. Out of the box, this component runs a daily background scan to protect you from all kinds of malware. Note that it needs to be connected to both power and Wi-Fi to run that scan, which defaults to happening at midnight.
You can also launch a scan manually at any time. By default, McAfee only scans new files, meaning files that weren’t present during its previous scan. I’d suggest turning off that option and scanning all files, because even then the scan takes less than a minute. Not surprisingly, the scan found no malware on my test Pixel 4.
While desktop installations of McAfee AntiVirus don’t get VPN protection, it’s built right into the mobile apps. Just a tap connects you with the fastest available server. Once you’re connected, nobody, not even the owner of the Wi-Fi network you’re using can snoop your web traffic. In addition, sites you visit can’t deduce your location based on your IP address, because you seem to have the IP address of the VPN server.
You can optionally use the VPN to actively spoof your location, perhaps to access location-locked content. Just cut the current connection and pull up the list of 48 available countries. Some VPN apps let you choose specific cities, or even specific servers. With McAfee, you just choose the country, even if it’s the entire US.
By default, the VPN only kicks in when you’re connected to an unsecured Wi-Fi network. You can change it to run all the time, or to only run when you explicitly turn it on.
Despite its simple appearance, McAfee’s VPN now has some advanced features. It now uses the up-and-coming WireGuard protocol on Windows and iOS, and it supports macOS. The Android edition gets split tunneling, which it refers to by the more understandable name “App level protection.” Using this feature you can run apps that need security through the VPN while letting lag-sensitive apps like video streamers connect directly.
When a mobile device switches between Wi-Fi connections or cell towers, the VPN must reconnect. There’s a faint chance some data might go through in the clear, before the connection is secured again. Just turn on Safe reconnect and McAfee will suppress all web traffic until the VPN is back on the job. The more common name for this feature is Kill Switch, but I like Safe Reconnect.
It’s never a great idea to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot that doesn’t use encryption, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. McAfee’s Wi-Fi Scan warns if you do so and offers to switch on the VPN. You can also run a more complete on-demand scan at any time. If the quick scan rates the network squeaky-clean, you can add it to your trusted networks with a tap.
By default, this feature notifies you when you connect to a network, telling you that it’s safe or otherwise. You can set it to only notify you about unsafe networks. It also promises to notify you when your network is under attack. I couldn’t find a way to exercise that feature. This component is a great partner for the VPN.
The panel for Safe Browsing says it lets you surf, shop, and socialize in your browser while being safe from risky sites. Try as I might, I couldn’t goad this feature into doing anything. Eventually, in the process of trying other possibilities, I turned the phone all the way off, and on again. Eureka! Safe Browsing for me!
I confirmed that the feature marks some sites Suspicious and others Risky, just as in the Windows version. There is one difference, though. If Safe Browsing blocks an HTTPS site that has a valid certificate, it can’t swap in the explanatory page, so you just get a browser error. This is not uncommon, and at least you’re not landing on the dangerous page.
If your idea of Android security focuses on antivirus and anti-theft, you may not like McAfee’s new style. Antivirus protection is present, but anti-theft is gone, along with quite a few other previous features. The one bright spot is the easy, helpful, built-in VPN, with its support from the Wi-Fi Scan.
Before the big makeover, McAfee’s iOS features were sparse compared to what you’d get on Android. The current apps are extremely similar, with nearly the same feature set. The iOS app no longer looks sparse by comparison, but only because the Android app dropped a bunch of features.
The app layout is as close to identical with the Android app as possible. Three icons across the bottom select My Security, Services, and Settings. As on Android, the My Security page presents your Protection Score along with recommendations to increase that score. One especially important recommendation involves setting up Safe Browsing, which uses local VPN technology to filter traffic on iOS.
On the Services page, you find Secure VPN, Wi-Fi Scan, and Safe Browsing, just as on Android. Antivirus Scan doesn’t appear, though. The same extreme safeguards that keep malware out of iOS devices likewise make it very difficult for antivirus activity.
Wi-Fi Scan looks and acts just like its Android equivalent. The VPN looks nearly the same, though it lacks the split tunneling and Kill Switch features found under Android. On the plus side, it uses the modern open-source WireGuard protocol to make its connections. As a negative, it took me a few minutes to realize that there’s no place to select your server location, so on iOS you won’t get the option to spoof your location.
Safe Browsing’s use of VPN technology does impose some limitations. It can only filter at the domain level, so if phishing fraudsters manage to inject a fake page into a legitimate site, McAfee won’t catch it. I did see it in action, marking some pages Suspicious and others Risky. And I verified that using the actual VPN doesn’t interfere with Safe Browsing’s VPN technology.
In both mobile apps, active tracking and improving of the Protection Score is really the most important point. You get a notification, you respond appropriately, you get rewarded with added points and a little celebration. Making mobile security fun may be more important to some than loading up on features that may or may not get used.
McAfee AntiVirus Plus doesn’t score at the tippy top, but it does earn very good marks from the independent testing labs and from our own hands-on tests. The most comprehensive protection comes when you install it on Windows, though some long-standing features are slated for removal. The Android and iOS apps underwent a transformation spurred by McAfee’s emphasis on protecting the customer’s privacy, identity, and devices, with the Protection Score front and center as impetus to improve. As part of that transformation, though, the Android app lost anti-theft and several other features. The Mac feature set remains limited compared to Windows. On the plus side, this suite now supports Chromebooks and ARM-based laptops now. The fact that one subscription covers all your devices pushes McAfee into the Editors’ Choice realm.
In a modern household with an eclectic mix of platforms, McAfee’s unlimited licensing becomes a sweet deal. However, if what you need is antivirus protection for a defined number of PCs, you may prefer one of our other Editors’ Choice winners. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus earns top scores from the independent labs and boasts its own vast array of useful bonus features. And Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus is the tiniest antivirus around, with an unusual journal and rollback system that can even remediate ransomware damage. Your choice should depend on exactly what you want to protect.
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