App Review McAfee Ultimate 2025

It is advised to take all reviews with a grain of salt. In extreme cases some reviews use dramatization for entertainment purposes.
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Shadowra
I bought McAfee Essential at the McAfee website. I was a tad confused by versions too, but looked at their comparison chart and Essential has what I wanted. Installed ok, does not seem heavy, BUT McAfee was really pushing features and options at me after it installed. Eg, put it on your iOS, give us access your email so we can read it for spam, and it wanted "special permission" to see everything I do in firefox if I want to use their web protection extension in firefox and if you don't give them permission you have to uninstall their extension in firefox! although it auto installed into Edge without even asking. Maybe Trendmicro is doing the same thing?? but the experience is much more pleasant with TM IMO. I will use the McAfee VM when I want to leave my breadcrumbs all over the internet. McAfee is NOT on my iphone, and does NOT have access to my email (that I know of). McAfee even says "we want all your personal info..." words to that effect. Unnerving at midnight. o_O
 
we want all your personal info
Give me data, I give you protection.
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OK I didn't (that I know of) but they already my middle son's SSN within 90 seconds of install! (or that's what it felt like to me) your experience may be different. ;)
That’s the identity monitoring part, similar to Norton/LifeLock and it will only get more widespread. Trend Micro offers a plan as well, called Premium Security that includes all that, but Maximum Security is just the core product. So the data is not really needed.
 
In My Account, its not difficult to remove auto-renew, if you try the first thing they do is cut the next renewal cost by half ! (at leas for me) I just continued & removed auto renew, & was informed it was off - The Web Advisor extension did not install on Brave anyway but did on Firefox (Brave is default browser) I haven't had any ads to upgrade or anything?
 
I had McAfee but used it for 15 minutes, I simply don’t like it. The GUI , so ugly, no settings , too pushy, no download scan, just on access scan.. terrible product.

I just let my license expire and will never install it again.

I trust TrendMicro, it suits everything I need.
The downloads are scanned by Web Advisor/Download Advisor when it is installed.

This is not really comparison between Trend and McAfee, they are 2 different products (albeit now with the McAfee Neo architecture , highly similar). It’s not an attempt to persuade Trend Micro users to install and use McAfee, it’s just a technical discussion.

Trend Micro is a product with a very clean and premium user experience that very few vendors (almost none) can match. Like McAfee, It is also not the most configurable product, there are *some* settings, including a protection mode that manages a bulk of them, but it’s not the Eset/Kaspersky level configuration.
Also, Trend Micro as a company has strong vision how their product should look, feel and behave. The user interface research is conducted in their headquarters here in London. They don’t really follow trends and don’t copy anyone. McAfee is more profit-oriented, everything that Norton does, McAfee does too.
 
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This is not really comparison between Trend and McAfee, they are 2 different products (albeit now with the McAfee Neo architecture , highly similar). It’s not an attempt to persuade Trend Micro users to install and use McAfee, it’s just a technical discussion.
@Trident I appreciate your detailed discussion of AV features and how AVs differ from one another. Thank you!
 
To top things off, McAfee according to a chinese forum in R131 has introduced TLSH (Trend Micro Local Sensitivity Hash), which is a Trend Micro patent, later on released as an open source on GitHub.
tlsh.org

Uber is one of the businesses that makes use of TLSH to track and identify similar routes (every route is normalised/sanitised and then hashed).

In the anti-malware world, this entails tracking every file as an entity, creating a cluster with similar files that only have small, local changes.
Incremental changes to safe files as well as to malware, only change the hash very slightly, so it’s a new file but it can still be identified as the same entity.

It’s a form of improved fuzzy hash.
 
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The downloads are scanned by Web Advisor/Download Advisor when it is installed.

This is not really comparison between Trend and McAfee, they are 2 different products (albeit now with the McAfee Neo architecture , highly similar). It’s not an attempt to persuade Trend Micro users to install and use McAfee, it’s just a technical discussion.

Trend Micro is a product with a very clean and premium user experience that very few vendors (almost none) can match. Like McAfee, It is also not the most configurable product, there are *some* settings, including a protection mode that manages a bulk of them, but it’s not the Eset/Kaspersky level configuration.
Also, Trend Micro as a company has strong vision how their product should look, feel and behave. The user interface research is conducted in their headquarters here in London. They don’t really follow trends and don’t copy anyone. McAfee is more profit-oriented, everything that Norton does, McAfee does too.
Glad that Trend Micro is receiving the love and credit here. I won't be in the cybersec field if I didn't start my career with Trend Labs. Now going for 20+ years purely on cybersec and I can say the experience I gained working with them really help me in my career.

@ Trident,
Are you a Trender too?
 
Is it there in the security console and available for Windows?
If parental control is located in the security console, I don't have access to the console, because I obtained the license from a member here at MT, and only he has access. I searched the entire McAfee GUI and couldn't find a parental control module. :rolleyes:
Same story with TM, i just stick with it. It works, cheap and no ads or nagging.
Yes, I agree with you. For me, it's these three AVs: Trend, K, and then McAfee, whose prices are affordable enough for me to make the purchase. :) BTW, thank you for sharing the URL for the Trend Micro sales website, because if I were to buy it here, I would pay a lot more expensive. ;)
 
The Web Advisor extension did not install on Brave anyway but did on Firefox (Brave is default browser) I haven't had any ads to upgrade or anything?
Yes, it does, my friend. I have Web Advisor installed on three browsers: Chrome, Brave, and Edge, and it works on all three. First, set that browser as your default, then go to the Chrome Web Store and install the Advisor extension. If that doesn't work, copy the URL of the McAfee Advisor extension from the Chrome Web Store and open it in the browser where you want to install the Advisor extension, then add it to the browser you use. It works on any Chromium-based browser. ;)
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You can install it on Brave, I just meant McAfee doesn't pick up on Brave & do a self attempt at install like Firefox - Not sure if I want it on both browsers yet still pondering ???

It does seem Parental Control isn't MacAfee's strongest point from my reading so far? :)
 
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You can install it on Brave, I just meant McAfee doesn't pick up on Brave & do a self attempt at install like Firefox - Not sure if I want it on both browsers yet still pondering ???
Yes, now I understand. In the web protection module in McAfee, only Chrome and EDGE are enabled. But that doesn't matter, as long as Web Advisor works and protects me on Brave without any problems. I don't have Firefox installed, so I can't say whether McAfee Web Advisor works on it.
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It does seem Parental Control isn't MacAfee's strongest point from my reading so far? :)
In mine, it's version McAfee Ultimate - family e não tem o módulo Parental Control, If it stays on the console, I don't have access to it, because I got the McAfee license from a member here. But, it was supposed to have the Parental Control, even more so because it is a family version.