MacOS indeed has more security baked in than Windows or Android, but your Macs still need protection. Even iOS devices, with their powerful security features, need a VPN to protect your data in transit. McAfee Total Protection used to let you add security to every device in your household, but now that generous licensing is only found in the McAfee+ suite . While it does support McAfee’s new emphasis on scam detection, McAfee Total Protection just doesn’t bring as big a bag of security goodies as it once did. Our top pick for an entry-level security suite is Bitdefender Total Security . It boasts excellent lab scores and a wealth of features, and its 25-license family pack only costs a little more than McAfee charges for five.
How Much Does McAfee Total Protection Cost?
McAfee was once known for its unlimited licensing at all levels, but at present, that bountiful offer applies only to McAfee+, which is a small step up from McAfee Total Protection reviewed here. The standalone McAfee AntiVirus now covers just one PC for $49.99 per year, sold only through third-party sites and with no volume discount. McAfee Total Protection, reviewed here, starts at $89.99 per year for a single license, which is rather more than most suites. ESET Home Security Essential , F-Secure Internet Security , and G Data Internet Security all cost under $50 for a single license.
For $99.99, just $10 more than a license for one, you can get three McAfee licenses. That’s clearly a better deal, but it’s still high compared with the competition. F-Secure Total , G Data Total Security , and ZoneAlarm Extreme Security are among those that cost between $60 and $70 per year for three licenses, while K7 Total Security charges just $41 per year.
When you reach the five-license tier, McAfee has some company. Along with Norton 360 Deluxe , McAfee charges $119.99 per year for five licenses. That’s still higher than some significant competitors. For example, Bitdefender and Avira Prime cost $109.99 at the five-license level, and Trend Micro Maximum Security costs just under $100.
There’s one more tier, but you won’t find it on McAfee’s website. Some third-party retailers, such as Amazon and Best Buy, sell a version of Total Protection that offers unlimited licenses, with a steeply discounted first year and a list price of $149.99. For that same $149.99 price, though, you can get McAfee+ (with its own unlimited licenses) directly from McAfee. And McAfee+ has advanced features that Total Protection doesn’t offer. In particular, if you upgrade to the $199.99 McAfee+ Advanced, you get full-scale identity theft protection on par with that of Norton 360 With LifeLock Select .
You don’t want your antivirus protection to end unexpectedly, so opting for auto-renewal is smart. McAfee contacts you before the automatic renewal kicks in, giving you a chance to change your mind. Auto-renewal also comes with a significant benefit. It activates McAfee’s Virus Protection Pledge. If malware gets past the antivirus, McAfee’s fearless virus hunters will remote-control your computer and eradicate it manually. In the rare event they fail at their efforts, McAfee will refund the price of the suite.
In years past, auto-renewal removed a 500MB per month bandwidth limit on the VPN, but that’s no longer necessary as all users, with or without auto-renewal, now receive unlimited bandwidth.
Installation
As with McAfee’s antivirus, you start by activating your registration code online. At that point, you can either immediately install it on the device you're using or send links to install it on other devices. There’s also an option to start mobile installations by snapping a QR code. When you download the program, you get a serial number distinct from your activation code. Hang onto that number, as you might need it to reinstall McAfee.
After the quick installation, McAfee is ready to protect you. As I mentioned in the antivirus review , McAfee’s designers have been fine-tuning the user interface over the last several years. At present, this suite’s main window looks very much like that of McAfee's antivirus. A large panel at the top left offers security suggestions or a link to your online subscription. Next to it, a smaller stats panel reflects the on/off status of the antivirus and firewall components and also reports any security problems.
The lower half of the window holds four panels identified as shortcuts. Where the antivirus panels link to Antivirus, Tracker Remover, Web Protection, and File Shredder, the suite instead offers quick access to Scam Detector, Secure VPN, Identity Monitoring, and Antivirus. You can open the My Protection menu for access to all features, organized into five groups: Scam Detector, Identity, Privacy, Web, and Device.
To complete your setup, follow the prompts to install McAfee’s WebAdvisor in your default browser (presuming the default is Chrome, Edge, or Firefox).
Antivirus Features
Of course, everything you get as part of McAfee AntiVirus is also present in the full suite. The two programs look very similar, the main difference being that the full suite displays different features in the main window’s four shortcut panels. Below is a synopsis of my findings on the antivirus; for the details, please read my full review.
Three of the five independent labs I follow include McAfee in their testing, and it earned perfect or near-perfect scores from all three. Along with most other tested antiviruses, McAfee took AAA certification from SE Labs in its latest report. McAfee also picked up the maximum possible score, 18 points, in the latest test by AV-Test Institute , along with half the competing products. And in three tests from AV-Comparatives , McAfee attained two Advanced+ certifications and one Advanced.
I use an algorithm that maps lab results onto a 10-point scale and returns an aggregate score. McAfee’s scores from three labs yielded a respectable 9.8 points. Bitdefender, also tested by three labs, matched McAfee’s 9.8 points. ESET also scored 9.8 based on tests from four of the five labs.
Neither AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation nor MRG-Effitas included McAfee in their latest tests. They did report results for Avast, Norton, and Microsoft, giving these three a clean sweep of all five labs. The resulting aggregate scores were 9.8 for Avast, 9.6 for Norton, and 9.1 for Microsoft.
In my own hands-on malware protection tests, I observed that McAfee doesn't scan files just because Windows Explorer accesses them for display. Rather, it scans any file on download and also checks each program before launch, quarantining any that prove to be malware. When I downloaded my current set of malware samples from cloud storage, McAfee detected and quarantined 100% of them, scoring a perfect 10.
Relative newcomer UltraAV , which replaced Kaspersky last year, also scored a perfect 10. Malwarebytes Ultimate and Webroot Premium both detected 99% of the samples, but better handling of detections meant Malwarebytes took 9.9 points, beating Webroot’s 9.7.
Challenged with a collection of 100 active malware-hosting URLs, McAfee used two techniques to defend the test system. Its WebAdvisor browser plugin prevented the browser from even visiting 81% of the URLs, and it eliminated the malware payloads during download for another 16%, earning a 97% protection rate, up from 94% when last tested. In their own latest tests, Avira, Bitdefender, Guardio , and Sophos Home Premium all managed a perfect 100% detection rate.
WebAdvisor also steers users away from phishing sites and fraudulent sites that pose as banks, finance sites, and even dating sites , with the purpose of stealing login credentials.
In testing with 100 very new phishing sites, McAfee scored a perfect 100% detection, tying with AVG Internet Security , Avira, Guardio, and Webroot. The phishing-focused Norton Genie also scored 100%, as did VPN-centric security tool Surfshark One .
By default, WebAdvisor marks up search results to help you avoid dangerous links. Markup also extends to links in posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, X/Twitter, and YouTube.
McAfee’s protection against ransomware isn’t a separate feature with an on/off switch. Rather, it’s built into ordinary real-time protection. Normally, I test ransomware protection by turning off all other antivirus layers. Since I couldn’t do that, I tested using totally unique hand-modified versions of the ransomware samples from my collection. The antivirus caught most of them, but it totally missed one file-encrypting ransomware attack and one whole-disk wiper, despite having all possible protective layers enabled.
Other Shared Features
The antivirus retains its integrated firewall , but it now leaves some tasks to the built-in Windows firewall, aiming to partner with it rather than replace it. The result is a firewall with very few settings and little visible presence.
Tracker Remover and File Shredder get prominent placement in the antivirus; in this suite, you access them from the main menu. Tracker Remover cleans up computer and browser items that a snoop could use to profile your behavior. You get finer control by using the cleanup feature built into each browser, but Tracker Remover certainly makes it easy. File Shredder ensures that files you intend to delete stay deleted, even if an eager FBI agent tries to undelete them using forensic software or hardware.
Scam Protection
When you first launch McAfee Total Protection, it uses its advice panel to recommend activating scam protection. When you open the main menu, what’s at the top? Right, scam protection. In a meeting, my McAfee contacts identified scams as a threat that’s just as dangerous as malware. That emphasis is highly evident in the Windows, iOS, and especially Android apps. As for macOS, it lags behind, as it has for years.
McAfee does its best to detect and warn you about text scams, email scams, and video scams. The iPad and Pixel 9 that I use for testing aren’t provisioned with a phone number, so I couldn’t see text scam detection at work. As for email scanning, it’s device-independent. You simply give McAfee access to your email account (Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft) and it checks messages as they come in, adding a warning to any that don’t seem legitimate. You can add scam protection for up to 10 email accounts.
Video deepfake detection is cutting-edge and limited to devices that can support its computing needs. In the Android realm, that means a Samsung Galaxy S21 or later or a Google Pixel 7 or later. As for Windows boxes, this page lists the significant system requirements. The app points out that even if your device doesn’t support video scam detection, you still have detection for texts, emails, and any screenshots you share with McAfee.
Getting Started With Scam Protection
As noted, enabling scam protection for your email is simply a matter of giving McAfee access. On iOS, enabling scam detection involves giving McAfee permission to filter text messages. I assume it’s similar for Android. Text filtering is device-specific, but then, most of us tend to send and receive texts from just one device.
As for video deepfake detection, as noted, you can only use it if your hardware supports the features. None of my test PCs come up to the requirements, but I arranged to swap my test Pixel 6 for a Pixel 9. Setting up video deepfake detection started with giving the app a couple of familiar permissions—microphone access and usage. But it also required an unfamiliar one titled Cast your entire screen. Familiar or not, with that handful of permissions, video deepfake detection was ready.
The app's setup pages point out that you’re not giving up your privacy by letting McAfee watch all the videos you watch. The audio and video feeds are processed right on your device, not sent to McAfee or stored anywhere. This local processing is part of the reason that video deepfake detection requires high-end hardware.
Hands On With Scam Protection
Knowing I’d be testing this feature, I stopped deleting sketchy emails a few weeks before. I needn’t have bothered. The email scam protection feature very specifically checks email messages as they arrive. It doesn’t look at anything already lurking in your Inbox.
I did manage to trigger the email scam detector by sending a file with a list of dangerous links. Right in my email client, I got a warning tag saying McAfee Alert. There wasn’t anything like a link to see details. Back in the McAfee app, I opened the Scam Detector page and noticed it reported one email flagged in the email scams section. Tapping that brought me to the full page of email scams, with another button reporting one email flagged. Alas, tapping that button did nothing.
To see the email, I had to tap the corresponding account in McAfee’s list and then find it in the list of recently flagged emails. Finally, I saw McAfee’s explanation of what was wrong with the message. There was no option to ask for further details or explore the problem in any way. As you’ll see below, that interaction is an important AI-based part of the scam warning system.
To check video deepfake detection, I dredged up a seven-year-old video in which Jordan Peele convincingly deepfakes President Obama . Naturally, I was disappointed when McAfee let it pass without any warning about fakery. My McAfee contact explained that deepfake detection specifically identifies AI-generated speech and that this older example used Peele’s voice-imitation skills rather than AI.
Several other, more recent examples that I tried got a simple, transient warning titled “Deepfake detected.” I wish they’d have the warning stay visible until dismissed, but it does seem to work.
Check Any Message or Text
Given that my mobile devices aren’t provisioned for texting, you might think my hands-on testing would be finished. You’d be wrong. At any time, you can feed Scam Detector a text or email that you find iffy, either by pasting in just the text or sharing a screenshot. This feature works on any platform (well, any except the tardy macOS).
If there’s anything off about the communication you shared, Scam Detector doesn’t merely sound an alarm. On request, it spells out exactly what details triggered its concerns. You can converse with it, but only using predefined responses, much like conversing with an NPC.
Growing Popularity for Scam Detection
McAfee isn’t the only security purveyor to consider scam detection an important feature. Scam Guard in Malwarebytes Ultimate, for example, behaves a lot like McAfee’s Spam Detector (though without the fancy video deepfake detection). The same is true of Scam Copilot in Bitdefender Premium Security and Bitdefender Ultimate. The free Norton Genie functions like a standalone scam detector, and the Norton suite products include scam protection. Avast offers a free standalone scam-examiner . Really, scams are the hot topic.
It’s worth noting that many similar scam chatbots give you free-form conversational access to the scam system. Norton Genie has a spot to ask a custom question. Malwarebytes includes a spot to type a message. And Bitdefender makes its availability very clear, labeling the input box “Ask me anything.” These do seem more flexible. For example, I asked Bitdefender, “I got a text that I have a package stuck at USPS due to a bad zip code.” Scam Copilot explained why that’s suspicious and advised confirming with the provider directly.
VPN Protection
A security suite protects your data on your devices, but when that data heads for the jungle of the internet, it's vulnerable. Running your connection through a Virtual Private Network, or VPN , secures the data while it’s in transit. The connection is encrypted between your device and the VPN server, so even if you've connected through a compromised Wi-Fi network, your data is safe. A VPN also serves to mask your IP address so nobody can track you or determine your location using that address.
When McAfee acquired TunnelBear in 2018, that acquisition came with the VPN server network of the popular TunnelBear VPN , a PCMag Editors' Choice pick for VPN protection. Until recently, McAfee maintained the separate Safe Connect VPN, built on the same technology but lacking cute, animated bears. Safe Connect is on the way out, replaced by the Secure VPN component integrated into all of McAfee’s security suite products.
When you connect to a server using TunnelBear, an animated bear visibly tunnels to the location on the on-screen map. The more sedate Secure VPN simply reports when you’re connected, but the effect is the same. Your data travels in encrypted form to the server you've chosen, or rather, to the country you’ve chosen—you don’t get to choose a server or even a city.
That whole-country approach seemed odd, so I checked with Justyn Newman , our VPN expert. He confirmed that most VPNs offer a choice of cities, at least in large countries. Some even let you view available servers in a given city and choose one with low latency, or one that supports specific features. With McAfee, if you choose the United States, you don’t know if you’ll wind up in Dull, Ohio, or Boring, Oregon.
Secure VPN and Your Privacy
Running all your internet activity through a VPN company's servers requires that you trust the company not to misuse your data. We look closely at the privacy policy for each VPN, hoping to see that they retain little or no information and have sensible policies in place to handle requests for information from law enforcement. We admire and approve of TunnelBear's clear and appropriate privacy policy . Secure VPN falls under McAfee's umbrella privacy policy, which is significantly more verbose and seems (to our non-legally trained minds) less focused on keeping customer data private.
Simple Collection of VPN Settings
Beyond choosing the country for your VPN connection, Secure VPN doesn’t have many settings. The biggest choice involves determining when the VPN connection activates. By default, it waits for you to connect manually, but you can have it kick in automatically when you connect to any network, or just when you connect to a Wi-Fi network with weak security. There's also an option to define trusted Wi-Fi networks where VPN protection isn't required. Enabling Safe Reconnect means McAfee cuts all communication if the VPN connection drops, restoring it when the VPN connection is up again. Many VPNs call this feature a kill switch ; with Tunnel Bear, it’s named Vigilant Bear.
Split tunneling is another popular VPN feature, and one that McAfee supports, in a way. Typically, this feature lets you identify apps, websites, or both that will connect without going through the VPN. People use this for connections that they deem unimportant, or that are so very important that even the tiny speed impact of a VPN isn’t acceptable.
That’s the typical use of split tunneling. McAfee apparently doesn’t let you, the user, make that choice. It simply routes certain connections outside the VPN if they “limit access on VPN.” Its explanatory pop-up shows icons for Netflix, Disney, Prime Video, and Hulu. It’s worth noting that when we last examined McAfee’s VPN, it had major trouble with Netflix .
That’s it for settings. Most VPNs offer a choice of connection protocols, even though only the most VPN-savvy users will know how to make that choice. A few offer high-end options like multi-hop, meaning your traffic goes through two VPN servers. McAfee, on the other hand, is all about simplicity. Pick a country, smack the On button, and you’re protected.
How Does Secure VPN Affect Communication Speeds?
Since there are no limits on the bandwidth you can use, why wouldn’t you just keep the VPN running all the time? The most likely reason is speed. When you connect through a VPN, your traffic necessarily travels farther and passes through more servers. The time from when your device sends a query to when it receives acknowledgment (called latency) tends to be longer, which can be a problem for gamers. More universally problematic is the fact that using a VPN can slow down your connection.
At PCMag, we use the Ookla Speedtest tool to gauge a VPN's impact on performance. We have a whole feature on how we test VPNs , so do read it for more on our methodology and the limits of our tests. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com's parent company. For more, see the ethics policy in our Editorial Mission Statement .)
When we last speed-tested Secure VPN, we found that its impact on latency was extremely close to the median, meaning half the current products have done better and half worse. The same was true of its effect on upload speed. As for slowing downloads, probably the most important stat, McAfee gave a poor showing. The median for this statistic at the time of that test was 27.82%, while McAfee’s test showed that it slowed downloads by 63.65%.
Slower connectivity is always a concern, but we suggest you consider more than just speed test results when choosing a VPN service. Many conditions can affect those results, so your experience may well differ from ours. More important are the VPN’s features and overall value.
Cross-Platform VPN Protection
Secure VPN works on multiple platforms, but not in precisely the same way on each. On a Windows or macOS computer, it automatically chooses what VPN protocol to use for encrypting your traffic, defaulting to WireGuard but switching to IKEv2 or OpenVPN if necessary. You have no input into that choice; you don’t even see which protocol it’s using. If you're on a mobile device, you can choose between WireGuard and OpenVPN or let the app make that choice automatically.
The Safe Reconnect feature I mentioned earlier is specific to Windows and Android. All four platforms offer choices for automatic VPN usage; Windows and macOS can define trusted networks that don’t require VPN protection. All four also offer a kind of split tunneling . Turned on by default, this feature routes internet traffic outside the VPN for apps or websites that McAfee deems not compatible, such as Netflix and Hulu. On the desktop, it’s an on/off toggle, without clear information about what apps are affected. Android users can view and edit the list of apps. As for iOS, split tunneling affects websites rather than apps. You can add to the list, but not view or edit the default websites.
VPN Without Bandwidth Limits
With the ever-growing interest in protecting internet traffic using a VPN, many security companies have added VPN protection to their security suites. However, in many cases, what you get is a severely feature-limited version. Frequently, you get a skimpy allowance of bandwidth, and you must accept whatever server the VPN chooses for you. Bandwidth limits are all over the map. Avira Free Security gives users 500MB per month, for example. The free version of TunnelBear used to start at 500MB per month with an option to earn more by posting about the product, but currently, TunnelBear offers a flat 2GB per month for free. Bitdefender is more generous, allowing 200MB per day. And with the free Avast One Essential, you get 5GB per week.
Secure VPN doesn't have the advanced features and settings a VPN expert would likely want, but it's very easy to use and comes without the painful limitations imposed in some competing suites. It adds significant value to this security suite. As noted, Norton suites all include a no-limits VPN, too. Where McAfee limits you to five devices even at its top tier, Norton gives you five, 10, or unlimited devices, depending on the tier.
True Key Password Manager
Your McAfee Total Protection subscription also gets you premium access to the True Key password manager. In fact, you get five licenses for True Key, so five individuals in your household can each have their own personal password manager. And each of those users can install True Key on all their Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices simply by installing from the app store and then activating with the code you give them.
Create Your Account
You’ll find a Password Manager menu item in the My Protection menu’s Privacy section. But that doesn’t mean this component lives within the suite. When you click that panel, it sends you to the web to initialize and configure True Key.
As part of the setup process, you create a master password of at least eight characters. True Key rates your password as you type, but it’s very lax. It rated “passwor” as Weak and “password” as Very Weak, but said “pass word” with a space was Acceptable. Yes, as you’ll see below, you can configure True Key so it doesn’t even require a master password for authentication, but you should still protect your credentials using a strong master password , something that you can remember but that nobody would guess.
On Windows or macOS, True Key installs as a browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari. Just like the PassWatch component in UltraAV, there's no separate True Key app on these desktop platforms.
True Key installs as an app on iOS, with its own internal browser. It can fill passwords in other browsers if you enable it as an AutoFill provider. On Android, True Key also installs as an app with an internal browser. It directly supports Chrome, Opera, and several other Android browsers. Once you enable True Key's Instant Log In, it can also log in to most Android apps.
True Key works hard to ease you into password management. It starts by displaying a list of over two dozen popular websites and encouraging you to add one as a login. When you click an item, it opens that page in the browser, explaining that all you need to do is log in as usual. It also walks you through the process of clicking a saved item to automatically revisit the site and log in.
You can speed up the setup process by importing data from another password manager, but the choices are very limited. The import process supports LastPass , Dashlane , and True Key itself, as well as importing from Chrome or Edge. An option titled Other Browsers directs you to export existing passwords to a CSV file and import them into True Key. Typically, the way to make this work is to export a CSV file and duplicate its format. In this case, I simply couldn’t achieve a successful import, not even when exporting existing entries and importing them right back in.
Basic Password Management
True Key does all the basic password management tasks you'd expect. When you log in to a website, it slides in a banner offering to save your credentials. If you revisit a site whose credentials True Key already holds, it fills them in automatically. When more than one set of credentials is available, it pops up a menu so you can choose.
If True Key notices that you’re creating a new account, it offers to generate a secure password. You can also invoke the password generator at any time by clicking its button above the list of accounts.
By default, True Key creates 16-character passwords using small letters, capital letters, numbers, and special characters. You can set the length to any even number from 8 to 30. Since you don’t have to remember these passwords, consider making them 20 characters or even longer.
In testing, True Key captured all the logins I tried, including two-step ones like Google and Yahoo. Once I got a few dozen passwords in place, I found the main list a bit unwieldy. By default, it’s sorted alphabetically, though you can sort by most used or recently used. If you save a lot of logins, you’ll find the search box handy.
There aren't a lot of settings to worry about, but there's one every user should update. True Key logs you out after a period of inactivity, but unlike most competitors, the default for this period is a full week! We strongly recommend setting it to no more than 30 minutes. This is a per-device setting, not global to your account, which makes sense—you might want a different timeout on your smartphone than on your PC.
Secure Notes and Personal Wallet Data
You can save any number of free-form color-coded secure notes and access them from any device. This can be handy for things like locker combinations and other real-world secrets.
Clicking Wallet lets you add personal data in six categories: Address Book, Credit Card, Driver’s License, Memberships, Passport, and Social Security Number. You can color-code these entries if that helps you keep them organized. Note that when you store a credit card in Dashlane, you not only get to pick the color to match the physical card, but you can also apply the bank’s branding.
Most password managers that store personal data use it to help you fill out web forms. RoboForm rules this group—it started life as a form-filling tool and evolved into password management. True Key doesn’t offer form-filling aid, although you can copy data and paste it into those forms. As with secure notes, the personal items you enter become available on all your devices.
Multi-Factor Authentication
True Key's biggest strength lies in its ability to use multiple factors for authentication . Right from the start, it 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. In testing, it used various techniques, including verification email and swiping a notification on an existing trusted device.
You can add other factors in settings. Your trusted email account is automatically available for verification, and your master password is active by default. You can also require authentication using a second device, typically a mobile device. The second device receives a request for authentication, and you simply respond by swiping. If your PC supports Windows Hello, you can use it as an authentication factor.
In the distant past, True Key used to support biometric authentication factors, but not anymore. In addition, contrary to its seeming emphasis on multiple factors, it doesn’t work with common choices like registering an authenticator app or receiving codes through SMS. Nor does it support authentication using a hardware security key .
Password Recovery Options
True Key initially requires a master password, but you can choose to rely on a combination of other factors instead. Even if you do, the master password remains available as a fallback.
Password managers that rely on a master password usually offer a warning that if you forget that password, they can't help you. (That also means they can't be compelled to unlock your account for the NSA, which is a plus.) McAfee can't unlock your account or tell you the master password you forgot, but if you've defined other factors, True Key lets you authenticate with those and thereby reset the master.
You're not likely to lose a desktop computer, but it's awfully easy to misplace a laptop or mobile device. If someone else gets hold of your device, you can remotely remove it from the trusted list.
Just the Password Management Basics
True Key is easy to set up and easy to use, and it comes with your Total Protection subscription, but it lacks advanced features. There’s no audit for weak passwords like you get with Dashlane, Keeper Password Manager , and others. The best password managers, NordPass and Proton Pass among them, provide secure sharing, along with a digital legacy to give your heirs access. True Key lacks even the simple ability to fill web forms. You may be better off choosing from the best free password managers instead.
Identity Protection Monitoring
The ID Protection component found in McAfee Total Protection scans both the Dark Web and the ordinary internet for signs your personal information has been exposed and helps you deal with the exposures it finds. To start, you direct it to check your account email for data breaches. Before you can see its findings, you must verify you own the account by typing an emailed code.
Next, review any breaches found in that initial search. Clicking each gets you details and advice, though sometimes the details are sketchy. When there’s clear information about a singular breached website, now’s the time to change your password for that site and capture it with True Key. Do go through all the initial findings and do what you can to remediate problems. When you’re done, click the button labeled Thanks for telling me or Mark as reviewed. Once you’ve worked through these, any new breaches will stand out.
Your next step is to add more personal information for monitoring. You can add:
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Bank accounts (10)
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Credit cards (10)
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Date of birth (1)
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Driver’s licenses (2)
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Email addresses (10)
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Health IDs (2)
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Passports (2)
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Phone numbers (10)
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Social Security number (1)
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Tax IDs (2)
For each email address, McAfee requires that you enter an emailed verification code. Likewise, you verify each phone number with a texted code. If you fill in the maximum in every category, you’ll have McAfee monitoring 60 distinct pieces of PII (personally identifiable information) for you.
Each time you add a new item, you’re likely to get some new breach warnings. As with email breaches, it’s wise to take care of these right away, even if all you do is click to mark the warning as addressed.
Tracking breached personal information is useful, but that’s as far as this suite goes in the identity protection realm. If you want full-scale identity theft protection and remediation, you must upgrade to the Advanced or Ultimate tier of the McAfee+ suite.
Raise Your Protection Score
For some years, McAfee has focused on using the Protection Score system, reached from your account dashboard online, to encourage users to make use of all security features. You still see a score (from 0 to 1,000) on the page, and McAfee still offers recommendations that will raise that score. But features like a virtual fireworks display and a raised score every time you deal with a breach have been dropped. My McAfee contact explained, “We are noticing from customer feedback that gamification is not the right way to do this.” He went on to say that with the new, strong emphasis on scam protection, the developers are investigating alternatives to Protection Score.
When filling out the personal data for monitoring, I used a few generic items such as the standard test Visa card number and a social security number with all the same digits. That got me a warning about 220 breaches and a protection score of 553. What could I do to boost that score?
The score page offered me three tasks to get more points. I added a phone number, a driver's license, date of birth, and passport number, an effort that raised my score from 553 to 554. The next suggestion was to scan my mobile device’s Wi-Fi connection and to run an antivirus scan on the device. When I completed all those tasks and refreshed the page, my score rose to 583, but I found the same recommendations displayed. Protection Score definitely isn’t getting the emphasis that it used to.
Total Protection for macOS
I've written a full and separate review of McAfee Total Protection for Mac ; I'll refer you to that for details. It's not truly a different product. Assuming you go for more than a one-device subscription, you can also protect Windows, Android, iOS, and ChromeOS devices, as well as Macs. You don’t get as many security features on the Mac, though, and it hasn’t had the user interface makeover that the Windows and mobile editions have enjoyed.
The Mac installer process adds the WebAdvisor extension to Safari. You can add the extension to Chrome and Firefox, just as you do on Windows. Tested under Chrome, WebAdvisor managed 100% protection against phishing attacks, precisely matching the performance of the Windows edition. McAfee has no current scores for Mac-specific malware protection from the independent testing labs, though. For a full evaluation, please read my review.
Total Protection for Android
It’s easy to add a mobile device to your McAfee subscription. Just click Account near the top right of the Windows edition’s main window and choose Add Device. You can snap a QR code or receive an installation link via text or email. As with all Android security solutions , McAfee requires a passel of permissions, but it helpfully leads you through granting everything necessary.
As noted earlier, video deepfake detection works on Android devices back to Google Pixel 7 and Samsung Galaxy S21. If you’ve upgraded your phone in the last three years or so, you can probably use it, but only the most recent PCs and laptops support this feature. And of course, you can get texts on an Android, but not (directly) on a PC. Android is the platform where scam protection is firing on all cylinders, and the app emphasizes that feature.
The app’s simple main window has three icons across the bottom: Home, Scam Detector, and Notifications. On the home screen, you can scroll to enter data for dark web monitoring, view data breaches, manage VPN and safe browsing, run an antivirus scan or a safety scan of your Wi-Fi connection, and more. Tapping Notifications naturally lets you review recent notifications from the app.
That leaves Scam Detector in the middle, with a bigger icon than the other two. As noted, Scam Detector is at its strongest on Android. I’ve discussed it in detail above.
Android Lab Testing Results
I have enough programming skills to code the apps that help me test malware protection under Windows, but I never learned to program macOS, much less Android. I simply can’t extend the hands-on testing to Android. That being the case, any score reports from the big testing labs are very helpful to me.
The testers at AV-Test Institute award Android security apps up to six points each for effective protection, small performance impact, and low false positives. All the Android apps I cover earned the full six points for protection and performance, though several dropped to five points for usability due to false positives. McAfee was among the crowd that reached a perfect 18-point score.
Reports from AV-Comparatives list the percentage of Android malware thwarted. This lab’s latest report didn’t include McAfee. All the contenders did well, but Bitdefender stands out with 100%. Avast, AVG, Avira, and Norton came very close with a 99.9% score.
When the team at MRG-Effitas reports testing scores, they supply a summary chart that distinguishes detection during download, detection before installation, and detection after installation. The most important figure is the total percentage of samples missed . If it’s less than 1%, the antivirus passes. All but one Android security product I follow came in above 99%, and most, including McAfee, scored 100%.
With perfect scores from two labs, McAfee looks pretty good. The only product to beat that collection of scores is Bitdefender, which has perfect scores from three labs.
Antivirus Scan
With the new emphasis on scam detection, regular antivirus software takes a back seat. There’s no giant scan button dominating the app. In fact, you have to scroll quite a way down the home screen to find the scan button.
If you never do find that button, don’t worry. You needn’t ever launch a manual scan if you don’t want to. By default, McAfee scans your Android for malware every day. Note that it needs to be connected to both power and Wi-Fi to run that scan, which defaults to midnight when the app assumes you're connected to Wi-Fi and charging your phone.
You can also launch a scan manually at any time. By default, McAfee only scans new files, meaning files that weren’t present during its previous scan. I’d suggest turning off that option and scanning all files because even then, the scan takes less than a minute. The only malware this scan found was a test file designed to confirm that antivirus protection is working.
Secure VPN on Android
VPN protection is integrated right into McAfee’s Android security app, just as it is on Windows and macOS. A quick tap connects you with the fastest available server. Once you’re connected, nobody, not even the owner of the Wi-Fi network you’re using, can snoop on your web traffic. In addition, sites you visit can’t deduce your location based on your IP address because you seem to have the IP address of the VPN server.
You can optionally use the VPN to actively spoof your location, perhaps to access location-locked content. Just cut the current connection and pull up the list of 48 available countries. Some VPN apps let you choose specific cities and even specific servers. With McAfee, you just choose the country, even if it’s the entire US.
By default, the VPN only kicks in when you’re connected to an unsecured Wi-Fi network. You can change it to run all the time or to only run when you explicitly turn it on.
Despite its simple appearance, McAfee’s VPN has some advanced features. On Android, it can connect using the WireGuard or OpenVPN protocol—by default, it makes the choice automatically, but you can override it. The Split tunneling feature automatically bypasses the VPN for certain apps that don’t “get along” with VPN usage. You can edit the list to protect apps that need security by running their traffic through the VPN while letting lag-sensitive apps like games and video streamers connect directly.
When a mobile device switches between Wi-Fi connections or cell towers, the VPN must reconnect. There’s a faint chance some data might go through in the clear before the connection is secured again. Just turn on the Safe Reconnect kill switch , and McAfee will suppress all web traffic until the VPN is back on the job.
Wi-Fi Scan
It’s never a great idea to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot that doesn’t use encryption, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. McAfee’s Wi-Fi Scan warns if you do so and offers to switch on the VPN. You can also run a more complete on-demand scan of your current connection at any time. If the scan rates the network squeaky clean, you can add it to your trusted networks with a tap.
By default, this feature notifies you when you connect to a network, telling you that it’s safe or otherwise. You can set it to only notify you about unsafe networks. It also promises to notify you when your network is under attack, though I couldn’t find a way to exercise that feature. This component is a great partner for the VPN.
Safe Browsing
The panel for Safe Browsing says it lets you surf, shop, and socialize in your browser while being safe from risky sites. At one time, the Android Safe Browsing feature used VPN technology to check and filter all the websites your device visits, blocking access to any that could be dangerous. It could control access for every app on the device, but using VPN technology meant it could only filter at the domain level. That blunt instrument was a lot less useful than on the desktop.
The current version of Safe Browsing visibly uses the same technology that made it so effective on Windows and macOS. When I made a quick sanity check test, it marked the same sites as Risky or Suspicious. New since my last review, the Android edition now includes tags such as Malicious sites, Phishing, or PUPs, just as it does on Windows or macOS
Not Your Ancestor’s Android Protection
If your idea of Android security focuses on antivirus and anti-theft, you may not like McAfee’s style. But if scams in texts, emails, and even fake videos are getting under your skin, you’ll love it. The current Android edition focuses strongly on keeping you from getting scammed, while still keeping essential features like the lab-awarded antivirus and the easy-to-use VPN.
Total Protection for iOS
With many cross-platform security suites, iOS gets short shrift. The same intrinsic security that makes coding iOS malware nearly impossible also puts roadblocks in the way of writing antivirus code. But scams can reach you through any device. In the current scam-centric McAfee realm, what you get on iOS is much the same as what you get on Android.
As on Android, the app has three buttons across the bottom of the screen: Home, Scam Detector, and Notifications. Also, as on Android, the Scam Detector button in the middle has a bigger icon than the others.
Tapping Home gets you a display almost identical to what you see on Android. At the top, there’s an advice panel that initially advises you to (surprise!) explore Scam Detector. Scrolling down, you reach several distinct protection collections. One is access to Scam Detector itself, just as on Android. Well, almost. No iOS devices are supported for video deepfake detection, at least not yet.
The next section, titled Device, offers Safe Browsing, Secure VPN, and Wi-Fi Scan, exactly as on Android.. The hidden difference is that clicking for a system scan checks for security problems, but (like most iOS security products) doesn’t attempt an antivirus scan. An identity monitoring panel rounds out the home page. The identity features work just as on other platforms, and your results from data entered on other platforms are shared across all your installations. Wi-Fi scanning works just as it does on Android. Identity Monitoring happens online, so it’s about the same whether you reach it from Android, iOS, or another platform.
During iOS installation, McAfee strongly advises that you install WebAdvisor in Safari. Do it! In testing on other platforms, WebAdvisor did a great job detecting malicious and fraudulent websites. A quick sanity check suggests that it is different on iOS. When I ran through a bunch of sampled caught by the Windows edition, most links downloaded a Windows malware file with no complaint from McAfee. The few that it did stop in the browser had “ safedns.mcafee.com ” in the warning page’s URL. To me, this implies that on iOS, McAfee is relying on coarser DNS-level detection of bad sites, meaning it can only block a whole domain.
The integrated VPN looks and works very much like its Android equivalent. The differences that were visible during my last review have mostly been addressed. You do get Split tunneling in iOS now, though your option is to skip VPN protection for listed websites, not apps like on Android. If you know VPN protocols, you can select WireGuard or OpenVPN; if not, let the VPN choose! The only significant difference is the absence of the Safe Reconnect kill switch in the iOS edition.
In both mobile apps, actively tracking and improving your Protection Score used to be important. You’d get a notification, respond appropriately, and be rewarded with added points and a little celebration. Recently, though, McAfee’s designers have concluded that making mobile security fun doesn’t have the desired effect. Protection Score’s star is on the descending track.
