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)
Hmm...I have version R133.152.1, but I can't find a way to enable fraud detection. Or is the EU "protecting" me from a potential protection option again?
Screenshot .jpg
 
Normally when you look at these tiles like VPN and so on, Scam Detection is the first option.
In addition, you can check the online portal, protection.mcafee.com

If it is not there, either it’s not part of the license, or not supported in this region yet. I would be very surprised to find out it is not supported in Germany and yeah, could be some EU regulations yet again.
 
If it is not there, either it’s not part of the license, or not supported in this region yet
Logic; it is a very new feature and must be supporting a limited number of languages at the start, and might not be availabe for all regions, considering the Chinese user will mainly require to detect scam of email messages in Chinese, not in English.
 
Normally when you look at these tiles like VPN and so on, Scam Detection is the first option.
In addition, you can check the online portal, protection.mcafee.com

If it is not there, either it’s not part of the license, or not supported in this region yet. I would be very surprised to find out it is not supported in Germany and yeah, could be some EU regulations yet again.
Im not from Germany ;-) but Holland, and i see this :

1757094801881.png


If i click i see this :

1757094832462.png


1757094878139.png
 
How can I stop this kind of ad (for its PC Optimizer) ? I have seen it sometimes and it is getting annoying.


View attachment 290766
One of the reasons we're recommending McAfee now is that they no longer flood users with upgrade prompts or extra feature ads. This approach feels fresh (or maybe just new to me), and it's quite interesting. I really hope they stick with it and don't bring back those ad notifications or scare tactics.
 
@Trident
In your original post you've posted that it took McAfee less than 10 minutes to preform full scan.
Do you have any large files on your system? Files like VHD files from virtual machines, system backup files, large video files?

I'm, just running full scan on my system after over 6 hours it's only at 43%. So I expect it to be well over 12 hours before the scan is finished.
When I used resource monitor to check what data is beeing scanned I noticed that it also scans all large file like Macrium backup files, virtual machines storage files.
For instance: it was scanning 80 GB VHD file for one of my virtual machines for almost an hour, during which time it was using 20+ GB of RAM and CPU 10-90+ %.

That's probably the most aggressive scan from any AV solution I've encountered so far.
 
@Trident
In your original post you've posted that it took McAfee less than 10 minutes to preform full scan.
Do you have any large files on your system? Files like VHD files from virtual machines, system backup files, large video files?

I'm, just running full scan on my system after over 6 hours it's only at 43%. So I expect it to be well over 12 hours before the scan is finished.
When I used resource monitor to check what data is beeing scanned I noticed that it also scans all large file like Macrium backup files, virtual machines storage files.
For instance: it was scanning 80 GB VHD file for one of my virtual machines for almost an hour, during which time it was using 20+ GB of RAM and CPU 10-90+ %.

That's probably the most aggressive scan from any AV solution I've encountered so far.
No, I don’t have any large files. I noticed McAfee takes long when it has to scan installers, composite files and all that. I don’t keep any of these on my systems, I download, install and then delete. I still have a fair share of installed software.
 
No, I don’t have any large files. I noticed McAfee takes long when it has to scan installers, composite files and all that. I don’t keep any of these on my systems, I download, install and then delete. I still have a fair share of installed software.
Yes it seems that it opens up and scans a lot of files and even some filetypes that other AV solutions skip.
It took McAfee good 8 hours to finish scan of my system. During the scan it moved some files to quarntine including an ISO file with Windows installation image and before mentioned 80 GB VHD file from one of the virtual machines. Detection for that file and another snapshot was Trojan:Script/SuspiciousPowershell.K!2.
It's good that I could restore all of them from quarantine. And luckily I had enough free space on C: so it could move such big file to quarantine. IDK what would happen if C: would get full.
It seems that running full scan is just too "dangerous" for my system :)
 
@Minimalist after running a full scan (or any scan), McAfee maintains 2 types of caches, low and high. The high cache appears to be cleared weekly, the low one seems to be forever.
There is no reason to do full scans anymore.

I suggest also you add exclusions for these folders where you have these large files.
 
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@Minimalist after running a full scan (or any scan), McAfee maintains 2 types of caches, low and high. The high cache appears to be cleared weekly, the low one seems to be forever.
There is no reason to do full scans anymore.

I suggest also you add exclusions for these folders where you have these large files.
Thank you for that info.
As I see only individual files can be added to exclusion list and not whole folders. It would be too much work to add all those files one by one to that list.
 
Pre-activated Windows ISO?
Nope. It was virtual machine with restored image of my live system, so I don't know what it found since it didn't find anything on my system.

Any option in settings to limit the size of the files transferred to quarantine?
It doesn't have much settings at all and no size limit setting for scanning or moving to quarantine.