McAfee Total Protection
One of McAfee Total Protection's major bonuses in the past was its unlimited license package, which covered all your devices, regardless of operating system.
Total Protection has done away with the unlimited licenses, but does offer an unlimited VPN and a few more features.
The question then is, does the addition of an unlimited VPN, and the additional features make up for the lack of cross-platform licenses?
Works with: Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, ChromeOS
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McAfee Total Protection
To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license. 30 day free trial available.
Total Protection is McAfee's entry-level paid antivirus suite, and in terms of malware protection, the package has received near-perfect scores from the three independent labs this publication tracks. However, higher initial costs than many of its competitors might be a hurdle for those needing malware protection without a complete VPN.
For those still wanting unlimited licenses, McAfee+ is the choice option, but it comes with a not-insignificant cost increase. Total Protection is also available on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.
The Wild World Of Antivirus Costing
At the time of writing on McAfee's website, Total Protection, with four additional licenses, is retailing for 119.99 USD, with a generous discount for the first year, resulting in the first year costing 39.99, then the 120 USD after.
The price can vary wildly depending on which publication you read or the third-party license seller you frequent. Total Protection for a single license can cost 90 USD to 100 USD for a package of 10 licenses, while third-party retailers can cost around 150 USD for multiple license packages. It is worth doing some shopping around if you have decided Total Protection is the way to go.
What is unavoidable, though, is that some of McAfee's competitors, including Bitdefender, ESET, and F-Secure, generally charge 30 USD cheaper for their similarly tiered antivirus suites. For consumers, it's about weighing up the feature set and seeing which best meets their specific needs.
Independent Lab Results
Before diving into the feature set of Total Protection, which includes an Antivirus, Web Protection, File Shredder, McAfee's Secure VPN, Identity Monitoring, and Tracker Remover, it is wise to cover the level of anti-malware protection offered by the package.
The anti-malware engine in Total Protection is the same as in McAfee Antivirus. It comes with the additional features listed above. This malware engine has been tested by three reputable independent labs, all of which tested Total Protection.
SELabs tested Total Protection and awarded it an AAA certification, the lab's highest certification for its home-orientated endpoint protection. If interested, it is worth reading the released report to see how comprehensive the testing schedule is and the requirements needed to achieve an AAA certificate.
The following lab, AV-TEST Institute, tests three parameters: Protection, Performance, and Usability, scoring each on a maximum of 6. In the lab's latest September and October 2024 tests, McAfee scored full marks, six out of six, in both Protection and Performance. Usability was scored at 5.5, and given that some of the complaints will be highlighted later, this seems fair. Overall, it is still a great score, and the company has received full marks on several occasions.
The last independent lab covered in this article is AV-Comparatives, which conducts four tests on consumer-grade antivirus suites. McAfee was tested in three of the four: the latest Real-world Protection Test, Performance Test, and Malware Protection Test. Respectively, Total Protection scored Advanced+, Advanced+, and Advanced, with Advanced+ being the highest possible award and Advanced being the second highest. In general, such a result can be considered a win, as it is rare that a product receives Advanced+ across the board repeatedly.
In hands-on testing conducted by another publication, Total Protection detected and mitigated 90% of the malware samples against it. It only takes one malware infection, say a ransomware attack, getting through to ruin your day. That said, no product is perfect, and in phishing protection tests, Total Protection did stop all malicious phishing URLs.
Installation and User Experience
One of the few complaints I have with McAfee's website is that it can be rather confusing, and selecting a product you want is by no means the simplest of tasks. You are advised to take the time to choose the product you want. Once that hurdle is navigated, installation is a simple process.
You will begin by entering your registration code online. At that point, you can either immediately install it on your device or send links to install it on other devices. There's also an option to start installation on mobile devices by snapping a QR code. When you download the program, you get a serial number distinct from your activation code. You are strongly advised to keep that number in case you need to reinstall McAfee for any reason.
Once installed, which is quick, the program is ready to protect you. The end user will be presented with the user interface, which has been improved over previous McAfee products but is still somewhat obtuse in some areas.
Currently, users are presented with a large panel at the top left that offers security suggestions or a link to their online subscription. Next to it, a smaller stats panel reflects the antivirus and firewall components' status and reports any security problems. Below it are the features accessible to the user.
Total Protection Feature Set
The stand-alone antivirus package offered by McAfee shares very little with Total Protection. Only the anti-malware engine and the firewall, which supplements Windows' firewall rather than replacing it, are shared components. The features listed below are exclusive to Total Protection.
Unlimited VPN
Seeing that antivirus suites are geared towards protecting your data stored on your machine, what happens when that data is sent into the wild, and often dangerous, digital landscape powered by the Internet? This is typically where a VPN comes in to encrypt data while in transit.
While VPNs might offer you the opportunity to view geolocation-locked content on a streaming service, this data encryption is the primary security feature.
McAfee acquired the popular VPN service TunnelBear in 2018 and has used the acquired technology to provide its customers with one of the best-rated VPN services going into 2018.
Now named Secure VPN, it is fully integrated into the user interface, allowing for easier access to starting and stopping the VPN as well as the settings. This is preferable to being redirected to separate applications or, worse, browser-bound web apps for VPN use.
Secure VPN is an unlimited VPN, so no daily data limits are imposed, similar to other VPNs offered by McAfee's competition, which are supposedly free but only offer a few hundred megabytes of data usage daily. That is a massive pro, but a VPN is only as good as its privacy policy.
Ideally, a VPN will store as little data as possible and have sensible policies in place to handle requests for information from law enforcement. TunnelBear's met and exceeded these requirements. Since McAfee has acquired the VPN, it has been brought under McAfee's umbrella privacy policy. This policy is rather verbose and appears to the writer's untrained eye less focused on data protection and privacy than TunnelBear's previous one.
Web Protection Modules
In this regard, Total Protection includes four modules designed to protect your web identity and general browsing experience. The first is a scam protection module for iOS and Android mobile devices. When activated, this feature reads incoming SMSes and flags them as possibly being scams or associated with phishing. The end user is presented with a banner warning them the message is suspicious.
Total Protection also includes an Identity Monitoring feature that scans the dark web for information about you from data breaches and leaks. By default, it will scan for the user's provided email address. Still, scans can be extended to include credit cards, bank accounts, email addresses, usernames, phone numbers, tax IDs, passports, driver's licenses, health insurance identifiers, social security numbers, and date of birth.
Second to last, for features that fall broadly under the web protection features, is a browser extension called Web Advisor for dangerous website links and content. It also rates search results as safe or risky.
Lastly, Total Protection also comes with a password manager called True Key. It is better than having no password manager. However, it can be quite a struggle to use and navigate. This also works through a browser extension but has no web interface.
There is a dedicated app on mobile devices, but for PC users, this feature is lackluster. That said, perhaps True Key's greatest feature is its multifactor authentication, which requires both the master password and a trusted device. Any attempt to log in from a device that's not yet trusted requires additional authentication.
File Shredder
Files deleted via normal procedures can be recovered. File Shredders prevent recovery of deleted data that could be of particular value to cyber criminals by overwriting data using specific protocols designed to obfuscate the original information. It will do this multiple times, making recovery all but impossible. McAfee's File Shredder will perform this action for selected files in accordance with the US Department of Defense standard.
It should be noted that these operations work best on hard disk drives. If you need to wipe data from a Solid-State Drive (SSD), several other methods exist that do not potentially shorten the drive's lifespan.
Wrapping Up
It is safe to recommend Total Protection for both its malware protection and VPN alone. The additional features are certainly nice to have in the modern internet-driven era. Aside from inevitable user experience snags, the product still punches with its competition, but the additional cost may scare first-time buyers into the competition.
Total Security has been pitched as McAfee's new starting point, and it most certainly hits this mark. However, compared to Bitdefender's offering, the limited licensing plan, and Total Protection's several variations in products across operating systems, it does not stand head and tails above the competition.
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