McAfee is a long-time player in the field of antivirus. The company was established in 1988, and is recognized for its firewalls, antispam products, file encryption and public key infrastructure. But, it is best known for its anti-virus software and has a stronghold official source in the market. Its security suites provide comprehensive protection against malware and viruses and are backed by a guarantee of $1,000,000 against identity theft.
All of McAfee’s plans include a fully-featured malware scanner that can block the entry of malware into your computer system and kill or eliminate those viruses that have already infiltrated it. Its real-time engine prevents malware files from downloading and reroutes, encrypts and reroutes data so that your internet activities aren’t able to be spied on.
During our tests, McAfee repeatedly scored top marks in the test of AV-Test’s 0-day and our malware test. Also, it passed our privacy tests, scoring 100% in each of those categories.
The interface of the suite is easy to use and clean. Accessing features like parental controls and identity theft protections can be quite a hassle, though. The dashboard is divided into separate menus. Help is quite difficult. The McAfee community forum is active, however you’ll have to pay for Techmaster Concierge to get help for more complex issues.
The only big disappointment was that McAfee’s scan did not clean up some junk files on our test systems. It doesn’t permit you to drag and drop a particular file or folder into the suite to scan it, as do many competitors. This is a major no-no for a security suite of this price.
