A single subscription for McAfee AntiVirus Plus lets you protect every Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS device in your household. It’s quite a deal.
The days of purchasing a single antivirus utility for your single computer are long gone. The modern household brims with computers and computer-equivalent tablets and smartphones. How convenient, then, that one subscription for McAfee AntiVirus Plus lets you install McAfee security software on every Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household. Yes, Windows users get a lot more features than those on other platforms, but it’s still quite a deal.
A McAfee subscription lists for $59.99 per year. That’s hard to price-compare, because few other vendors offer unlimited licenses. The Panda Protection Advanced security suite protects all your Windows and Android devices for $34.99 per year, while the more feature-rich Panda Protection Complete goes for $74.99 per year. You pay $99.99 per year for unlimited installations of Total Defense Unlimited Internet Security, which gives you security suite protection for PCs and Android devices and antivirus for Macs. Most other competing antivirus products sell as one-, three-, or five-license subscriptions. For those odd ducks who really, truly want to protect just one PC, McAfee makes a one-license, Windows-only version available for $39.99.
To install McAfee on a Windows computer, you first go online and activate your license key. If you set up automatic renewal during the process, 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 rare event that they can’t fix it, the company refunds your purchase price.
With that housekeeping out of the way, it’s time to download and install the product. McAfee introduced a streamlined installer earlier this year, but I somehow got the old, multistep installer. My company contact confirmed that they do randomly assign a few users to get the old installer, to help ensure their changes are having a positive impact. I’m not sure how that helps, but even the old installer did the job with no hand-holding from me. Once I chose a complete installation, it walked through all the steps itself.
Once installation is complete, the product shows what it can do. It offers to run a scan, check for outdated applications, remove tracking cookies, and permanently delete files in your Recycle Bin. It also shows how to contact tech support, in case you’re having trouble getting off the ground.
Earlier this year, McAfee redesigned the user interface for its security product line. The new, HTML-based interface has a menu at the top that breaks down product features into five main pages: Home, PC Security, Identity, Privacy, and Account. Down the left side there’s a security indicator for your local computer as well as a list of your other protected computers, and a button to extend protection to more devices. I find the new interface to be both friendly and attractive, but it occasionally seemed sluggish, slow to respond to my clicks.
I always perform hands-on testing for my antivirus reviews, but I also pay close attention to the results reported by independent antivirus testing labs. These labs do their best to emulate real-world situations and evaluate how well each antivirus product performs. Of the four labs I follow, McAfee participates in testing with three, for its Windows products.
Around the time of my previous review, McAfee had just switched to a new behavior-based detection engine that they call RealProtect. Some of the lab test results available at that time predated the introduction of RealProtect. This time around, there has been enough time for testing to catch up with the latest engine.
I’ll start with the bad news; McAfee failed both tests from MRG-Effitas. Note, though, that where other labs offer a numeric score or multiple certification levels, this lab’s results are pass/fail. In the banking Trojans test, 83 percent of tested product failed. In another test using all types of malware, only Kaspersky Anti-Virus earned Level 1 certification, meaning it prevented all of the malware attacks. Of the remaining products, 60 percent failed. I give these pass/fail tests less weight when calculating an aggregate lab score.
On the bright side, McAfee did quite well in the three-part test reported by AV-Test Institute. It earned the maximum six points in the Usability and Performance categories, meaning it had few or no false positives and a low performance impact. A score of 5.5 for Protection brings its total to 17.5 points; any product that earns 17.5 or better earns the title Top Product. Note, though, that Avira, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro managed a perfect 18 in the latest test.
Lab Test Results Chart
AV-Comparatives doesn’t report numeric scores, instead assigning three levels of certification, Standard, Advanced, and Advanced+. I follow four tests by this lab, three of which include McAfee. It managed Advanced+ in the performance test, but in the malware protection and real-world protection tests it just took Standard certification. Avira, Bitdefender, and Kaspersky earned Advanced+ in all four tests.
I use a formula to normalize test results to a scale from 0 to 10 and then derive an aggregate result. McAfee’s 7.9 point score is on the low side though, as noted, it did exhibit some high scores. Kaspersky and Bitdefender hold the best aggregate scores, 10 points and 9.6 points respectively, with results from all four labs.
McAfee’s real-time malware protection proved quite effective in my hands-on testing. Many antivirus products scan files on any access, even the minuscule access that occurs when Windows Explorer lists the file name, size, and so on. McAfee doesn’t scan programs until just before they execute.
In almost every case, McAfee quarantined the sample before the process even showed up in Task Manager. Along with each quarantine notification popup, I got an odd message from Windows, “Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.” In a few cases, McAfee disinfected the sample, leaving a virus-free executable. It detected 96 percent of the samples and scored an excellent 9.5 of 10 possible points. Emsisoft detected every single sample, but a few cases of imperfect blocking pulled its score down to 9.4 points.
Tested with my previous set of samples, several products did even better. Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus and Comodo detected 100 percent of the samples and scored a perfect 10. Several other products detected all the samples but didn’t quite reach 10 points.
Malware Protection Results Chart
My malicious URL blocking test uses a feed of malware-hosting URLs generously supplied by MRG-Effitas. Typically, these are no more than 24 hours old. I launch each URL and record whether the antivirus prevented access by the browser, eliminated the dangerous download, or failed in its protective duty.
In the usual course of events, every product gets a different set of URLs for testing, the very latest ones. This time around I had the chance to test McAfee simultaneously with Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security. Both products scored very well, each in its own way. Trend Micro blocked access to 84 percent of the URLs, and whacked another 13 percent during download. McAfee blocked just 12 percent of the URLs, but eliminated 83 percent of the malware payloads, popping up the warning, “Woah, that download is dangerous!” (Tintin fans will appreciate the reference).
Scores in this test are all over the map, but very few products have done better than McAfee’s 95 percent protection. Avira Antivirus Pro also managed 95 percent, and Trend Micro earned 97 percent. Norton still holds the record, with 98 percent protection.
The same component that keeps your browser away from dangerous websites also defends against phishing sites. These are fraudulent sites that emulate sensitive websites for the purpose of stealing your login credentials. If you fail to notice that URL of the supposed bank site you’re logging into is ripyouoff.com, the fraudsters own your account. Of course, these fakes quickly get blacklisted, but the perps just pop up with new ones.
To test phishing protection, I collect the very newest URLs from several antiphishing websites. I launch each URL in five browsers at once. One browser uses the product under testing for protection, naturally, and another has Symantec Norton AntiVirus Basic to defend it. The other three rely on fraud protection built into Chrome, Firefox, and Internet explorer. I discard any URLs that don’t load properly in all five browsers, and any that don’t actively seek to steal login credentials. Once I have a hundred or so data points, I run the numbers.
Phishing Protection Results Chart
Very few products do as well as Norton in this test. In fact, over 20 percent of recent products turned in a detection rate not only worse than Norton’s, but also lower than that of all three browsers. Like Check Point ZoneAlarm PRO Antivirus + Firewall, McAfee matched Norton in this test, and that’s very good—vastly better than when I tested the previous version. Webroot, Trend Micro, and Bitdefender are the only recent products that did better than Norton.
The WebAdvisor component that handles fraudulent and dangerous URLs has a few more useful tricks. Some fraudulent or malicious sites attempt to catch the unwary by typosquatting, registering domains that are just slightly different from popular destinations. If you type, say, “pyapal.com” it politely asks if perhaps you intended to type PayPal.
You can configure it to rate links in search results, and stay safe by only clicking those with a green icon. Pointing your mouse at an icon reveals the categories that contributed to its rating, and you can click a link to view a full site report. Among other things, this report includes a map of closely associated sites and a list of the domain’s DNS servers.
I did run into some trouble with site reports. The in-browser message that warns you away from malicious or fraudulent URLs also includes a link to view the full site report. However, in almost every case when I clicked that link I got a strange error message rather than a report. I also found that for some links marked as dangerous in search results, the site report called them harmless. My McAfee contacts verified that some of the servers aren’t handling site report requests properly, and that they’re still working on it.
Most security companies reserve firewall protection for the full-blown security suite, but McAfee puts it right in the standalone antivirus.
