Ever since i purchased my computer 7 months back, i've had the so called, "Mcafee Security Center" installed. I paid for 3 year subscription at once. 7 months later my computer started having very bad performance. Often the browsers would freeze, whatever i'm typing would vanish, or the keys won't work, etc etc.
I kept checking and realized i have the latest updates. Then my friend tell me that mcafee is bogus and their all 4 in one integrated (virus-scan, firewall, antispyware, spam) mcafee security center is utterly fake. He suggested me to use 3 seperate softwares for firewall, antivirus and antispyware of 3 different companies.
I then subscribed to avira antivirus, Pc tools Spy doctor and Commodo firewall. My computer problems ended right away. Avira detected several viruses on hard drives, which mcafee could never do. Spy doctor detected 298 files full of malware and adware, and the commodo firewall blocked lots of intrusions.
Now computer is good. So is Mcafee a fraud?
also i still have over 2 years of mcafee subscription left. what to do? can i get refund if possible?
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2 responses so far ↓
1 gurux33 // Apr 3, 2008
You can contact them and try to get a refund, they are not a fraud, however. They are a legitimate company.
Any antivirus program can miss viruses, it does happen, but McAfee is among the most popular antivirus programs because it is fairly effective.
You can however get FREE* antivirus programs (as well as FREE* firewall, and FREE* anti-spyware software) that works just as well or better. Since these are available, I've always felt the ones you need to pay for are a ripoff.
I recommend AVG antivirus (http://free.grisoft.com),
and Zone Alarm firewall (http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp),
additional note:
*Free as in no cost, not free as in free software: http://www.fsf.org/
2 Brian F // Apr 3, 2008
No, mcafee is not a "fraud", but also definitely not my first choice for antivirus (Although WAY WAY ahead of norton and panda)
No antivirus product is going to catch 100% of the viruses, especially "spyware or malware" there are so many different "definitions" of spyware. What one person may allow on their system is different than what another will allow. By the same token, different spyware programs will treat different programs/cookies/registry entries different. Some will detect as spyware, other's won't.
Opera browser installs what could be considered spyware, and little application in the "ad supported" version that isn't in the version you pay for. The application downloads ads that display in the corner of the browser. If you don't like that piece of software on your machine you can either purchase opera, or use something else.
As to the firewall "blocking intrusions, don't consider every pop-up you get from a firewall as an attack. I remember many many years ago, ZoneAlarm began offering a free version, and a lot of people started installing it on their systems. By default it popped up all kinds of "intrusion attempts" that were normal network pings/broadcasts. It got so bad with some ISP's with people reporting "attacks coming from your IP addresses" they began labeling those particular complaints as "I.W.F." Idiot With Firewall.
That said, McAfee, Trend, Norton etc. have become HUGELY bloated and will definitely start to degrade system performance unless you have LOTS of ram available.
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