Serious Discussion Someone needs to talk me out of buying a McAffee lic

General Security Discussions
42 Replies 4,300 Views
While McAfee is indeed lightweight, using two antivirus programs simultaneously can cause conflicts and slow down your system. Your current security solutions are already quite comprehensive. It's better to stick with what you have and ensure they're updated regularly.
 
I have had this last few weeks images with Mcafee, ESET & Emsisoft on, all these are up to date & all usable, I think? I'm now sticking with McAfee, though I can still revert but probably wont - My only concern with McAfee is I have had no issues & no blocks with somewhat unusual programs such ad HD Cleaner, Hasleo Imaging & Wise 365 etc. Most AV's at least at some time get very cross with such software & try to terminate me.

Edit: If you use two AV's together this will happen!
 

Attachments

  • Two Av's.jpg
    Two Av's.jpg
    125 KB · Views: 143
Sorrento said:
I have had this last few weeks images with Mcafee, ESET & Emsisoft on, all these are up to date & all usable, I think? I'm now sticking with McAfee, though I can still revert but probably wont - My only concern with McAfee is I have had no issues & no blocks with somewhat unusual programs such ad HD Cleaner, Hasleo Imaging & Wise 365 etc. Most AV's at least at some time get very cross with such software & try to terminate me.
Click to expand...
I have never ever gotten AV software so cross with me that it wanted to kill me; but I can see some scenarios.
 
McAfee doesn’t need anything to be ran alongside of it. Just saying. Unless in compressed archives, from malicious websites you can barely download anything, they are mostly blocked and if not blocked, the more aggressive download advisor removes the file. You can barely download 3-4 samples and that’s if you are trying super hard. Unless in password protected archives and from a trusted website of course.

McAfee also removes emails which could contain malware.

Any test of McAfee with malware collections is unrealistic because McAfee will never let you hoard malware. Vast bulk of it is blocked before it even reaches your machine.
 
Last edited:
From @roger_m :
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.
Click to expand...
malwaretips.com

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

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...
malwaretips.com malwaretips.com
 
Gandalf_The_Grey said:
From @roger_m :

malwaretips.com

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

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...
malwaretips.com malwaretips.com
Click to expand...
As a continuation to this, McAfee was rewritten. Decades of progress were shift + delete(d) and the project was started all over again.

Now we are 31 months and releases down the road but McAfee is still redoing and reintegrating features.
They’ve obviously been prioritised.

There are minor “comforts” that McAfee at the moment may be unable to provide as well as some features are subject to frequent changes.

At least 5-10 releases more will be needed before all these minor touches are done.
 
Trident said:
As a continuation to this, McAfee was rewritten. Decades of progress were shift + delete(d) and the project was started all over again.

Now we are 31 months and releases down the road but McAfee is still redoing and reintegrating features.
They’ve obviously been prioritised.

There are minor “comforts” that McAfee at the moment may be unable to provide as well as some features are subject to frequent changes.

At least 5-10 releases more will be needed before all these minor touches are done.
Click to expand...
@cartaphilus asked for reason...
 
Trident said:
As a continuation to this, McAfee was rewritten. Decades of progress were shift + delete(d) and the project was started all over again.

Now we are 31 months and releases down the road but McAfee is still redoing and reintegrating features.
They’ve obviously been prioritised.

There are minor “comforts” that McAfee at the moment may be unable to provide as well as some features are subject to frequent changes.

At least 5-10 releases more will be needed before all these minor touches are done.
Click to expand...
Indeed, that is the primary reason for my inquiry. McA was previously a cast member on "My 600lb Life" when McA Solution and PC Responsiveness were mentioned in the same context. However, following its recent revision, it appears to join the cloud AV Idea associated with Trend Micro, Panda, and Webroot. In other words, it operates as a very lightweight client, with most of the heavy processing being handled externally.

Furthermore, its lack of direct connections to the kernel allows McA to function as a supplementary second opinion antivirus without interfering with the primary antivirus solution. (Naturally, the main antivirus solution can always lead to system crashes.)
 
Sorrento said:
I have had this last few weeks images with Mcafee, ESET & Emsisoft on, all these are up to date & all usable, I think? I'm now sticking with McAfee, though I can still revert but probably wont - My only concern with McAfee is I have had no issues & no blocks with somewhat unusual programs such ad HD Cleaner, Hasleo Imaging & Wise 365 etc. Most AV's at least at some time get very cross with such software & try to terminate me.

Edit: If you use two AV's together this will happen!
Click to expand...
Oh Thank goodness and here I was thinking of this.

1753475780830.png
 
cartaphilus said:
Indeed, that is the primary reason for my inquiry. McA was previously a cast member on "My 600lb Life" when McA Solution and PC Responsiveness were mentioned in the same context. However, following its recent revision, it appears to join the cloud AV Idea associated with Trend Micro, Panda, and Webroot. In other words, it operates as a very lightweight client, with most of the heavy processing being handled externally.

Furthermore, its lack of direct connections to the kernel allows McA to function as a supplementary second opinion antivirus without interfering with the primary antivirus solution. (Naturally, the main antivirus solution can always lead to system crashes.)
Click to expand...
It does have 2 kernel drivers, one of which is a minifilter, but compared to other solutions that have 5-10-15, these are nothing.

McAfee though can not be put in the same category as Panda and Webroot.

Panda uses locally only a cache. The cache was and still is about 50 mb of the hashes of most prevalent malware. Webroot doesn’t even have that, though they recently released a Yara rules engine (WRYES.exe). These Yara rules improve its effectiveness, but like many other technologies, this is used only on untrusted files, only executables.

McAfee if you see my other posts has a bit more capabilities offline.
 
Establish a budget for security protection: probably via the criticality and confidentiality of your data. If protection costs exceed value of your data, then don't spend more money on it. Consider all the forms of value though, the time it took to develop the data (hourly pay rate * number of days), the worth of your data to competitors, the reputation loss you would incur if your lose the data (future loss of income), the inconvenience to daily operations if you lose the data. And I must have omitted some. :)

This line of thinking encourages you to think as a business, and so you should. Everything in life has a cost or value. You have to justify your spending, in numbers.
 
Last edited:
Trident said:
It does have 2 kernel drivers, one of which is a minifilter, but compared to other solutions that have 5-10-15, these are nothing.

McAfee though can not be put in the same category as Panda and Webroot.

Panda uses locally only a cache. The cache was and still is about 50 mb of the hashes of most prevalent malware. Webroot doesn’t even have that, though they recently released a Yara rules engine (WRYES.exe). These Yara rules improve its effectiveness, but like many other technologies, this is used only on untrusted files, only executables.

McAfee if you see my other posts has a bit more capabilities offline.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah totally; I've read it's offline components are quite a few and each one using a different approach towards analysis.
Victor M said:
Establish a budget for security protection: probably via the criticality and confidentiality of your data. If protection costs exceed value of your data, then don't spend more money on it. Consider all the forms of value though, the time it took to develop the data (hourly pay rate * number of days), the worth of your data to competitors, the reputation loss you would incur if your lose the data (future loss of income), the inconvenience to daily operations if you lose the data. And I must have omitted some. :)

This line of thinking encourages you to think as a business, and so you should. Everything in life has a cost or value. You have to justify your spending, in numbers.
Click to expand...
My home was DOGEd here to reduce IT budget.
 
Victor M said:
Establish a budget for security protection: probably via the criticality and confidentiality of your data. If protection costs exceed value of your data, then don't spend more money on it. Consider all the forms of value though, the time it took to develop the data (hourly pay rate * number of days), the worth of your data to competitors, the reputation loss you would incur if your lose the data (future loss of income), the inconvenience to daily operations if you lose the data. And I must have omitted some. :)

This line of thinking encourages you to think as a business, and so you should. Everything in life has a cost or value. You have to justify your spending, in numbers.
Click to expand...
Except its hard to value your personal data such as family photos, music, tax returns etc.
 

Recently browsing

Members who viewed this thread in the last 5 minutes

You may also like...

Back
Top