App Review McAfee Protection (Plus Plans, Total Protection, LiveSafe)

It is advised to take all reviews with a grain of salt. In extreme cases some reviews use dramatization for entertainment purposes.
Product name
McAfee Total Protection/Plus Plans
Installation (rating)
5.00 star(s)
User interface (rating)
5.00 star(s)
Performance (rating)
5.00 star(s)
Core Protection (rating)
5.00 star(s)
Proactive protection (rating)
5.00 star(s)
Additional Protection notes
See tests
Browser protection (rating)
5.00 star(s)
Positives
    • Many features
    • Low impact on system resources
    • Lightning fast scans
    • Easy to use
    • Simple and non-intrusive
    • Ransomware protection
    • Strong and reliable protection
    • Detects or blocks in the wild malware
    • Consistently high test scores
    • Accurate results and reliable antivirus engine
    • Effective malicious URL blocking
    • Virus signatures are updated daily
    • Excellent scores in independent tests
    • Great value for money
    • Effective malware removal
    • Well designed, clear and easy to use interface
    • Multi-layer protection approach
Negatives
    • Advanced users may want more control
    • Short on configuration options
    • Includes paid-for components (paywall)
Time spent using product
Reviewed between 1 to 7 days
Computer specs
11th Gen Core i5
16GB RAM
Recommended for
  1. All types of users
Overall rating
5.00 star(s)
Some very variable full scan results from people with McAfee & it don't seem to be PC speeds? - With me I probably will do only one full one anyway but we are all different, maybe the cloud based system is much more dependant on variable factors than traditional AV systems. Two hours 20 minutes & not finished is a bit silly?
 
Some very variable full scan results from people with McAfee & it don't seem to be PC speeds? - With me I probably will do only one full one anyway but we are all different, maybe the cloud based system is much more dependant on variable factors than traditional AV systems. Two hours 20 minutes & not finished is a bit silly?
Could be down to files though, like I said. 1.8m yesterday. Will give the amount when it finishes.

I rarely do a full scan tbh. Just interested to see how it performed.

Asus Laptop / i5-1135g7 l 16GB RAM
 
You might try installing from official link of McAfee (for Firefox): McAfee® WebAdvisor
Thanks, the extension seems to install, and it opens a page "you're not protected..." do this one more step, there's a blue button at the bottom of page -- re allow permissions (paraphrase) and I click it and nothing seems to happen! what is supposed to happen at this point?? The ext was still not functioning in ff so I again removed it. Something in ff seems to be blocking successful installation re permissions, but I'm not sure what that something is... :unsure:
 
I removed the advisor from Firefox & reinstalled it later as I remember through the Mcafee app?
Yes, I have now done it both ways, from the AV app and from the link @silversurfer posted. Installs but does not fully activate, even after I click the button for permission to collect "personal data" :unsure:
 
Is McAfee uploading a lot of files to the cloud for analysis? Is that why it's being slow for many users? Have you checked? @Trident
McAfee doesn’t upload files for cloud analysis, whenever a file has to be analysed, McAfee collects features (imports, strings and so on) and submits that.
 
Frankly, when I saw my friends praising McAfee so much, I wondered if I was using the wrong program. When I installed the program on my computer and tried it two months ago, it didn't delete the Eichar file. It deleted it when I scanned the computer. In addition, scanning the entire computer took more than three hours. I think the lack of settings is another problem.
 
Why do you guys care so much on how long scans take? I'll just scan once after installing a new AV then maybe once every couple of months or less after that. Regular scans really aren't needed for most people.
The full scan takes as long as needed to inspect all files 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Is McAfee uploading a lot of files to the cloud for analysis? Is that why it's being slow for many users? Have you checked? @Trident
ChatGPT suggested that my situation on VM and the last 8 to 10% to scanned were most likely zipped files, maybe iso, VMware snapshots, etc, and if McAfee is actually trying to unpack them, perhaps emulate them... it's gonna take a long time. I'm guessing most AV skip those. I had selected do a manual full scan and it was the first, I rarely do a full scan on VMs, but did out of curiosity.
 
ChatGPT suggested that my situation on VM and the last 8 to 10% to scanned were most likely zipped files, maybe iso, VMware snapshots, etc, and if McAfee is actually trying to unpack them, perhaps emulate them... it's gonna take a long time. I'm guessing most AV skip those. I had selected do a manual full scan and it was the first, I rarely do a full scan on VMs, but did out of curiosity.
It does emulate every file, this is how the deep heuristic engines work. Because majority of heuristics are on file behaviour. Then you’ve got the machine learning scan for unknown files and Yara rules scanning (Yara rules are typically efficient cuz they could contain start and end bytes).

You can review McAfee as an antivirus that uses several engines, they are all called in different times and situations and they need to do their job.
 
I just booted my McAfee partition on my test PC and updated it, after having not used it for a few months. I really like the new UI - not that it was terrible before and they've clearly put a lot of thought into its design. I also like that when you run a scan you have the option to disable fast scanning, so there is less impact on your PCs performance, if you want to use your PC while it is being scanned. There's just one thing that I don't like. When you restore quarantined files, there is no way to add an exclusion, so they don't get quarantined again. You can only manually add exclusions. This is dealbreaker for me. But it is one of several antiviruses I would recommend to others.
 
I just booted my McAfee partition on my test PC and updated it, after having not used it for a few months. I really like the new UI - not that it was terrible before and they've clearly put a lot of thought into its design. I also like that when you run a scan you have the option to disable fast scanning, so there is less impact on your PCs performance, if you want to use your PC while it is being scanned. There's just one thing that I don't like. When you restore quarantined files, there is no way to add an exclusion, so they don't get quarantined again. You can only manually add exclusions. This is dealbreaker for me. But it is one of several antiviruses I would recommend to others.
Yeah I noticed this, bit of an annoyance
 
Why do you guys care so much on how long scans take? I'll just scan once after installing a new AV then maybe once every couple of months or less after that. Regular scans really aren't needed for most people

I agree totally, for me there is no point in keeping scanning some data that don't change, I only did a scan of everything out of interest after comments on here - Its a rarity to do full scans & most AV systems only do quick scans normally anyway - Storm in a tea cup :p