My 1-Month McAfee Total Protection Trial Review

Hello followers, visitors, and others. In this post, I'll do a review about my 1-month McAfee Total Protection program for my devices (two Windows 10 PC and one Android Mobile). This review is about my first Windows 10 PC only.

In this review, I’ll make a conclusion in every section with three colors, green for a good experience, yellow for half and half, red for bad.

First, I'll show you a list of the products that the program offers.

McAfee Total Protection Products:

·        Protect 50 Devices

·        Anti-Virus (Real-time scan and scheduled scan)

·        Firewall

·        VPN

·        ID Protection

·        Browser Security, Web Boost -- Two Browser Extensions (McAfee Web Boost and McAfee Web Advisor)

·        Tracker Remover

·        Password Manager

·        File Shredder

·        File Lock (McAfee Vaults)

·        Anti-Spam

·        McAfee Safe Family

 

Installation:

In the process of installing the program, the PC remained very slow until the installation was completed.

 

ANTI-VIRUS

Custom/Full Scan:

After the installation was completed, I started a quick scan to check the PC performance during the scan. The first time and second time, the PC was slow, and the third time was just normal. After that, I tried to make a full scan on one partition, 200Gb, and during the scan, the device was extremely slow, and I could not do anything on the device, and I had to leave it. I don’t really know exactly how much time it took to finish, but I think it took 2-3 hours to finish.

Important Note: Never run a full or large custom scan unless you will not use the device.

Real-Time Scan:

The real-time scan was very great and fast, actually. That’s all I have to say about the real-time scan.

Scheduled Scan

The scheduled scan runs the same as the quick scan, so the device works normally, not slow.

Secure Apps (Vulnerability Scanner)

“Vulnerability scanner finds and installs the latest software updates for Windows and your programs; so, your device stays safe and up to date.”. You can choose to check the windows updates or not.

 

McAfee scans were good, but you can’t exclude a directory during the scan and during the real-time scan. It keeps removing a simple file I needed in a directory, and every time I have to go to the quarantined items and restore it. Also, if a quarantined item is a large file (like 3Gb or more), it’ll f*ck the program to restore it, and it’ll stop responding. You have to just exit the program or leave it until the restore is completed, and yeah btw, you can’t know if the file was restored successfully or not!

Firewall

“Firewall protects your device against intruders who can hijack your device and steal personal information, and policies the information your device sends and receives.“.

McAfee Firewall contains a lot of features.

Traffic Controller

You can choose to block the whole internet access and block all the network activity in your device. You can also select what programs can only connect to the internet.

Smart Advice

Smart Advice makes it easy to decide which programs on your device can connect to the internet. You can enable to detect and decide automatically, or you are the one to decide.

Ports

It shows you what ports are opened in your device and can be accessed by other devices in your network and/or the internet.

McAfee Firewall is a very significant feature, and everything works fine.

VPN

Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I don’t know it’s because some VPNs are banned (and some are working) in my country, or it’s broken in McAfee, so I can’t say anything about that.

 

ID Protection

You’ll be redirected to the McAfee page. After signing in, it’ll open the ID Protection page, and it’ll tell you that if your personal information (email address, date of birth, account passwords, personal ID numbers) was exposed in the dark web database or not, and then will show you a score out of 1,000. In the end, it’ll also show you the data breaches of your email and also if your password is breached too.

You can also add any of your personal info to monitor, and it’ll tell you if any info is breached.

It’s a great feature, and yeah, it’s working, I found some websites that had data breached, and my passwords were shown in plain text :””.

 

Browser Security and Web Boost

Two browser extensions will prompt you to install in your browser (after the installation of McAfee). The first extension is McAfee Web Advisor, and the second one is McAfee Web Boost. McAfee Web Advisor will protect you from potential risky websites and ads and scan every file you download. McAfee Web Boost will pause every auto-playing video in your way.

I have to say this, but these two extensions are really great and effective. I hope they don’t steal my browsing history :”.

Tracker Remover

Tracker remover removes the unwanted system files, like recycle bin, temporary files, registry (I don’t know exactly what they mean by registry or what exactly they’ll remove), shortcuts (also, I don’t know what exactly they’ll remove), windows history, last file fragments, ActiveX controls, jump lists, Flash and Silverlight cookies, memory file images, problem report files, thumbnail cache. And, the browser files, like cookies, history, cache for all your browser. And also, the deleted and sent emails. You can of course select which things you want to remove.

It’s a great feature to remove unwanted files to free up some space and speed up your device. But be aware before choosing an option to remove your unwanted files. Maybe you’ll choose an option you want (like the first time happened to me, it removed all the Windows quick access shortcuts).

 

Password Manager

You’ll need to install McAfee TrueKey (a browser extension).

It’s a nasty extension. After I installed it, it signed out from all of my websites, signed out from my Chrome account, paused my syncing in Chrome, and refreshed my whole browser. I just wanna ask a question. Why the f*ck you did all of that?

 

File Shredder

File shredder is a great feature in general. It removes the files permanently from your hard disk; so, they cannot be restored by any recovery software.

The shred process is about to overwrite a file with zero bits and then remove it; so, anyone tries to recover a file, it’ll show the file with zero bits content (not the original content).

You can choose to shred the recycle bin, temporary internet files, or custom. Also, you can choose the shred level, Basic (shred 2 times), Safe (shred 5 times), Complete (shred 10 times).

I recommend you to use this feature all the time for your important personal info.

 

File Lock (McAfee Vaults)

It’ll prompt you to create 3 security questions, and then you’ll need to create a vault, and enter the details, name, password, recovery email, and the vault size. To open a vault, you have to enter the password, and then it’ll mount into a partition, and you can use your files. It’s recommended to remove and shred your files after moving them to the vault for extra security. You can also set auto-lock to a vault, and it’ll be locked automatically if you are away from your computer for the time you choose.

I don’t know if the vaults are encrypted or not, but I think it’s not. It’s a great feature to keep your important files with a password. But with encryption, it’ll be great.

 

Anti-Spam

Protects your email from spam emails. You can choose what option suits you, and there are 5 options for anti-spamming, from minimal (no anti-spam) to restricted (every email will be marked as spam unless in your friend list).

I didn’t try to monitor it, actually, because my email on my device didn’t receive too many emails.

 

McAfee Safe Family

I’m so sorry, but I didn’t try it :”(. All I know is you’ll have to install an app called Safe Family for parental controls. And then install it on all of your kids’/family devices.

 

 

I think now I covered all the features and products in McAfee Total Protection. I’m so sorry if I didn’t try a feature to tell you about my experience.

I’d highly recommend that if you’re looking to protect your devices and to keep it safe, then you should use McAfee Total Protection. but be aware of the Tracker Remover feature and the deleted items in the scans, and check the quarantined items regularly.

The next review will be on Malwarebytes Premium.

Thank you.