Sunday, August 22, 2010

Giving McAfee the boot

MaximumPC published an article earlier this year rating the top antivirus/security apps. They raved about how much McAfee's offering has improved over previous years. McAfee has rewritten it's code to be much faster and have a smaller memory footprint, compared to the bloated joke of previous years. McAfee seemed to have regained their reputation and name as a leader in the antivirus/security field.

Based on this review, I picked up McAfee Total Protection 2010 to give McAfee a shot at redemption. At about $18 for a 3 PC license, I figured it was worth a shot... and it was! The interface was pretty clean and it had a lot of features that I found useful.


I was using it for a couple of months, and then I decided to run a spyware check with Webroot Spy Sweeper (without a doubt the best spyware cleaner out there). And guess what... IT FOUND TWO TROJAN HORSES!!!


McAfee has been in the business for a long time, so I figured I must have done something wrong and that there is no way that they would miss these trojans. So I removed them from quarantine and ran a manual scan with McAfee on the folder where they resided. McAfee still did not detect these two trojans!

I removed McAfee from my computer and installed ESET Smart Security 4, which is built on the outstanding ESET NOD32 virus scanner. ESET detected and quarantined both trojans.


That sealed the coffin for McAfee in this household. I removed it from each of my family computers and have switched everyone over to a combination of ESET Smart Security 4 and Webroot Spy Sweeper. I don't see myself ever returning to McAfee.

All of the client performance improvements in the world don't mean anything if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do... protect my computer from viruses and malware. Stay clear from McAfee if you value your PC's security.

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