McAfee Internet Security offers all expected suite features, antivirus, firewall, antispam, parental control, and more. But you get the best of these features in McAfee's standalone antivirus, for quite a bit less.
Protection for every Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS device in your household. Password manager rich in multi-factor authentication options. Many bonus features.
Parental control awkward, limited, and ineffective. Offers little beyond what's in the antivirus.
Upgrading to McAfee Internet Security gets you a clever password manager along with parental control and spam filtering that you may not need. You're better off paying $20 less for McAfee AntiVirus Plus.
McAfee packs an amazing number of useful features into its standalone antivirus product. This year's edition adds ransomware protection and a PC speed booster. You might think there's not much left to add to distinguish its security suite. Indeed, while the added features in McAfee Internet Security are welcome additions, they don't add value for everyone. Password management is a universal need, but McAfee's offering isn't one of our top choices. Not every user requires parental control, or spam filtering. And these components haven't significantly grown or evolved since last year. Unless this combination of components perfectly fits your needs, you're better off sticking with the less expensive McAfee AntiVirus Plus.
All the products in McAfee's security lineup include protection for every Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS device in your household. That's a lot of protection for $89.99 per year. Bitdefender and Kaspersky give you five licenses for that price, and Symantec Norton Security Premium lets you have 10 for $109.99 per year. Even if you don't use more than 10 licenses, it just feels good to know there's no limit.
If you buy this product in a store, you may find that the box says it offers 10 licenses. A McAfee marketer explained that labeling a box "unlimited licenses" confused consumers looking at boxes on the shelf. Don't worry. You really do get unlimited licenses.
Last year McAfee's designers abandoned the blocky old user interface for a completely new look, in shades of white, gray, and pale blue. This year the macOS product got the same style of makeover. A menu across the top lets you select pages for Home, PC Security, Identity, Privacy, and Account. The True Key password manager shows up on the Home and Identity pages. Antispam also appears on the Identity page, and parental control comes under Privacy. Other than that, it looks about the same as the standalone antivirus.
Of course, everything you get as part of McAfee AntiVirus Plus is also present in the full suite. Below is a precise of my findings, but for details you really should read the full antivirus review.
Three of the four independent labs I follow include McAfee in their testing. After spotty results for a few years, McAfee seems to be doing better. It aced tests by AV-Test Institute, with 18 of 18 possible points. In three tests by AV-Comparatives, it earned two Advanced+ ratings and one Advanced.
Tested by MRG-Effitas, McAfee earned decent scores, but most others did better. Kaspersky Internet Security earned perfect scores in the latest tests by all four labs, and Bitdefender came close.
In my own hands-on malware protection tests, I learned that McAfee doesn't scan files merely on access. Rather, it waits until they try to launch and silently quarantines any malware. It detected 93 percent of my samples and earned 9.3 points, sharing the top spot with F-Secure and Cylance.
Challenged with a collection of 100 malware-hosting URLs, McAfee defended the test system in two ways. The WebAdvisor browser plugin deflected 10 percent of them, and its download-checker eliminated another 87 percent. A protection rate of 97 percent is very good, but Norton eked out 98 percent, and Bitdefender Internet Security rules this test with 99 percent.
WebAdvisor also steers users away from phishing sites, fraudulent sites that try to steal your login credentials for banks, finance sites, and even gaming and dating sites. In testing with 100 very new phishing sites, McAfee achieved 100 percent protection, a feat recently also matched by Kaspersky's security software.
New in this edition, Ransom Guard adds a layer of protection against ransomware. When it detects a whiff of illegitimate "file transformation," it backs up files that might be affected. In the case of a ransomware attack, it quarantines the attack and restores the files. When I tested with hand-modified versions of real-world ransomware, it definitively identified one as ransomware, totally missed another, and flagged the rest as generic malware. It looks like this feature may need tuning.
McAfee Antivirus Plus contains a surprising number of features that go beyond merely protecting against malware. New in this edition, PC Boost speeds your day in two ways. It boosts applications by diverting extra resources to the foreground program, and to any processes that need more than they're getting. And it boosts browsing by actively pausing any videos that try to launch automatically.
The firewall component both protects against outside attack and keeps programs from misusing your network connection. By default, it handles program control internally, which is much better than entrusting that task to the untutored user. For testing, I enabled its Intrusion Protection module and attacked the test system using vulnerabilities generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool. The attacks didn't penetrate the fully patched test system, but McAfee's firewall didn't actively defend against them. It mostly stood up to my direct attack test, though I managed to disable a few of its Windows services.
A vulnerability scanner seeks out missing security patches for Windows and popular programs and, when possible, automates the update process. You can use the Shredder to securely delete sensitive files beyond the possibility of forensic recovery.
On the My Network page, you can view all devices on the network. The list flags devices that have McAfee protection, and you can set up a trust relationship between Windows installations that allows you to remotely check security status and adjust configuration.
The Protect More Devices feature, accessed from the Home page, lets you send an email or text with a link to install protection on any Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android device you own. There's also an option to find all devices on your network that don't have McAfee protection. In testing, I didn't manage to see that feature in action, but it's not all that necessary. Just email yourself the installation link, and open the email on each device.
Base protection for non-Windows devices is the same whether you're subscribed for the antivirus or the full suite, though some of the suite's added features add mobile apps. On a Mac, it installs McAfee AntiVirus Plus (for Mac). The most impressive event in my macOS testing? It achieved 100 percent phishing protection, just as under Windows. The Android edition is a full-featured security suite, with antivirus, antitheft, call and text blocking, and more. Those using iOS don't get as much—secure storage for photos, backup for contacts, the ability to locate a lost device, and safe browsing using a Proxy VPN. If you had to pay for each license, installing on iOS would be a waste, but with no limit on devices you might as well.
Like parental control, the anti-spam component's installation takes place the first time you try to use it. That makes total sense. If you use a web-based email system, the service provider filters out spam, and they're quite effective. Your work email probably has spam filtered out at the server level. Those who need a local spam filter are an endangered species. But if you are a member of this group, McAfee has a lot to offer.
McAfee's spam filter integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. In these email clients, it adds a handy toolbar and automatically tosses spam messages in their own folder. You can still use it if you're a fan of Eudora or The Bat!, but you'll have to define a message rule to sift out the spam. McAfee filters spam from POP3 and Exchange email accounts, though it doesn't handle IMAP accounts in your email client the way Kaspersky does.
In an unusual twist, McAfee can reach into your webmail accounts to filter out spam. When this feature first came out, it was impressively and unusual. But now that most webmail services do a fine job of filtering spam internally, it's less necessary. If you choose to use it, you can view messages filtered out of your webmail stream right in the application and, if necessary, rescue any valid mail back to your online inbox.
There are quite a few options for configuring the spam filter. To start, there are five levels of protection, from Minimal, which allows more spam but doesn't throw away valid mail, to Restricted, which blocks all messages unless the sender is on your Friends list. I'd advise leaving it set to the default Balanced level.
You can define custom spam filtering rules, but I can't imagine why any user would take the time to do this. The Friends list identifies addresses or domains that should always reach the Inbox. You can manually edit this list, add friends from the email client toolbar, or add all your contacts to the Friends list. There's also an option to automatically block messages written using character sets for languages you don't speak.
If you do need spam filtering at the local level, McAfee can handle it. Where many products limit protection to POP3 accounts, McAfee can filter Exchange accounts and even pull spam from your webmail. If you don't need it, well, at least it isn't installed by default.
McAfee's parental control component hasn't changed significantly in years. In fact, it's nearing the end of its life. My McAfee contact indicates that by the first quarter of 2019 it will be withdrawn, and McAfee Internet Security will not include a parental control component. No parental control is probably better than a lame parental control system.
Note that McAfee's mega-suite, McAfee Total Protection, does offer parental control, but not internally. Rather, your subscription gives you access to McAfee Safe Family, a modern, cross-platform parental control system.
Parental control isn't part of the default installation, which makes sense, given that nonparents don't need it, and some parents don't want it. The first time you try to use it, you go through a simple install process and set a configuration password, so the kids can't turn it off. When you go to configure protection, you'll find that it's quite limited. For each child's Windows account, you can choose content categories for blocking and set a schedule for Internet use. You can also view a report of activity for each child or all children.
As with previous versions, setting up parental control for a child's account that has Administrator privileges triggers a big warning. And yet, many parents do give older children Administrator accounts, to avoid constantly having to jump in and supply an admin password any time the child wants to install a new game. Most other parental control systems manage to handle Administrator accounts.
To configure the content filter, you first choose one of five age ranges. Doing so preconfigures which of the 20 content categories to block. Rather than the usual list with checkboxes, McAfee displays a list of blocked categories and another list of allowed categories, with arrow buttons to move items back and forth between the lists. Most are what you'd expect, but I'd sure like to see a site that gets blocked for "Historical Revisionism."
There's an option to block search links to sites containing inappropriate images or language, but what it really does is attempt to force Safe Search in the search engines. This attempt fails when the engine defaults to a secure HTTPS connection, as Google does.
The content filter does handle websites that use HTTPS, which means your kid won't sleaze past the filter using a secure anonymizing proxy. I couldn't uncouple the content filter using the three-word network command that foiled parental control in a few less advanced products. Last year I found that many truly raunchy sites slipped right past the filter. This time around, the content filter blocked every naughty site I dreamed up.
Like many parental control systems, McAfee offers a scheduling grid that lets you schedule permitted times for internet access. However, it remains the most awkward implementation of this feature that I've encountered. You can't drag a rectangle to, say, block from midnight to six every morning of the week. You can only drag within one day's column. The grid is so tall that you can only select about seven hours at a time, and it doesn't auto-scroll when you hit the edge. This feature could be so much easier to use! The kids can't fool it by resetting the system clock, but, as the product warns, a kid with Administrator access could get around it by tweaking the time zone.
The simple parental report lists all domains blocked, along with their categories. It also logs all attempts to use the Internet when the schedule doesn't allow it.
Don't bother installing this suite's parental control component. It's going away in a few months, in any case. If parental control is something you need, pick a top-notch standalone product. Or look to a suite whose parental control component is comprehensive and effective, such as Kaspersky, Norton, or Check Point ZoneAlarm Extreme Security.
In my briefing on this year's product line, I was told about big changes in password management. True Key would be rebranded as McAfee Password Manager, and no longer available as a separate product. But when I clicked the button for Password Manager, it installed True Key. My McAfee contact explained that the changeover should happen by March, mentioning the company needed "to honor commitments to certain partners." For now, please check my review of the standalone True Key product for current details.
While you can install McAfee Internet Security on every device in your household, you only get a license for one True Key profile. If you want a separate profile for each family member, you'll have to upgrade to McAfee Total Protection, which comes with five licenses.
You can install True Key on all your Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. It syncs nicely across them all, and supports a dazzling array of multifactor authentication options, including email verification, trusted device management, master password, face recognition, and fingerprint recognition. You can even reset a lost master password using multiple other authentication factors. With almost all other password managers, losing your master password means you've lost all your data.
True Key's multifactor authentication system works nicely, and it handles standard password manager functions, but it lacks advanced features found in the best competing products. There's no secure password sharing, password inheritance, or automated password updating. It doesn't even fill personal data into web forms. Getting it free as part of this suite is great. But if you're paying, you'll be better off with one of our Editors' Choice password managers.
If your security suite puts such a drag on system performance that you turn it off, that's not very good protection. Fortunately, the days of resource-hog suites are long in the past. I still test performance impact using a few simple tests. I time certain common activities before and after installing the suite, averaging multiple runs, to come up with a percentage reflecting impact on performance. McAfee put more of a drag on some activities than others, but not so much that you'd really notice.
For one test, I run a script that launches at startup and checks CPU usage once per second. When 10 seconds pass with CPU usage at five percent or lower, I consider the PC ready for use. Subtracting the start of the boot process (as reported by Windows) yields the length of time required to boot the system. The average boot time went up by 68 percent after I installed McAfee, which is more than the last time I tested it. It's true, though, that many users just let their PCs sleep, rebooting only when forced.
My other two tests time scripts that move and copy a mixed collection of files between drives, and that zip and unzip that same collection repeatedly. McAfee didn't slow these scripts at all, which is excellent. In truth, you spend a lot more time working with files than you do restarting the system. McAfee's average impact of 23 percent is near the bottom of current products, but that's still not terrible. At the other end of the scale, adaware, Bitdefender, Norton, and Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus didn't have any performance impact measurable by my tests.
To upgrade from McAfee's antivirus to the McAfee Internet Security suite costs $30 per year. For that price, you get a password manager that focuses strongly on multifactor authentication, along with a spam filter and parental control system that you may not need. Every other feature is already present in the nominally standalone antivirus. Protection on macOS, Android, and iOS doesn't change. Given that the extra $30 would more than pay for a year of True Key, most users have no compelling reason to upgrade.
Other than the cross-platform benefits, this suite is comparable to Bitdefender Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security. These two suites earn fantastic scores from the independent testing labs, their components are capable across the board, and they offer a comparable smorgasbord of bonus features. They're our Editors' Choice winners for entry-level security suite.