McAfee Mobile Security (2014)

As mobile malware becomes more prevalent, most PC antivirus companies now offer Android security products as well. McAfee stands out among its competitors with an excellent malware detection record, a good interface and an impressively thorough set of features, such as its comprehensive anti-theft options and a privacy advisor that shows you how much personal information your device's other apps absorb. Most of these features are available in the app's free version. However, McAfee isn't quite as feature-rich as Avast or as easy to use as Lookout, and our tests showed it could decrease your phone's performance. How does McAfee stack up compared to the competition?) MORE: Best Android Anti-Virus Software 2014 Setup and interface Setting up McAfee Mobile Security is a breeze. You can either install it from the Google Play app store or visit the McAfee website, which will eventually lead you back to Google Play. After installation, the program will first ask you to create a 6-digit PIN, which you'll use to modify and regulate some of McAfee's privacy features. The app then asks permission to become a device administrator; with this permission, the app can access your screen-unlock password, track incorrect unlock attempts and, if necessary, perform a quick factory reset — all part of anti-theft protection. After a quick and colorful tutorial, you'll arrive at the app's home screen; from here, the app will begin its first security scan. The home screen looks busier than those of other mobile security apps. McAfee's app has many features and presents you with a lot of information, but once you start actually using the app, its excellent organization makes everything very clear. The screen consists of five main buttons: Security, Privacy, Web Security, Backup and Find Device. Tap any of these, and you'll see three buttons: a gear for settings, an "i" for information and a question mark that links to a very thorough help page. McAfee makes the only mobile-security app we've tested that offers such ready access to its customer-support documentation. Detection and performance Of the five mobile antivirus apps in our most recent round of reviews, McAfee Mobile Security scored highest for combined protection and usability in tests conducted by German lab AV-Test. McAfee Mobile Security detected 100 percent of the 2,191 pieces of malware AV-Test threw at our phone. Only Kaspersky Internet Security and Norton Mobile Security attained similarly perfect scores; Lookout Mobile Security and Avast Mobile Security & Antivirus weren't far behind, with scores of 99.4 percent and 98.7 percent, respectively. We tested out McAfee Mobile Security for ourselves, downloading the well-known EICAR test virus to our Samsung Galaxy S4 via the Chrome browser. McAfee allowed us to download the file, but when we initiated a scan, McAfee's app flagged the file as potentially malicious. (Lookout Mobile Security was the only app that warned us immediately as soon as we tried to download EICAR.) After detecting the malware, McAfee presented us a detailed report on the file and gave us the opportunity to keep or remove the test malware. MORE: Best PC Anti-Virus Software 2014 We found that our Galaxy S4 took quite a big performance hit while running a malware scan with McAfee Mobile Security. Before installing McAfee Mobile Security, our phone scored 2,145 on Geekbench 3, rising to 2,293 after the app was installed. With a full malware scan going, the score dropped by nearly half, to 1,229 — a performance hit of 1,064 points. Full scans took about three minutes. Of all five mobile-security apps we tested, McAfee slowed our phone down the most. Lookout caused the smallest slow-down, with a performance hit of only 130 points (from 2,166 down to 2,036), followed by Avast with 626, Norton with 656 and Kaspersky with 774. Anti-theft and data protection McAfee's anti-theft features are located under the Find Device tab. The options are Locate (find your phone or tablet via GPS), Lock (lock the screen using the McAfee PIN), CaptureCam (have the device take a picture of its user with the device's front-facing camera) and Wipe (delete all user data). Each of the above features can be activated through the McAfee Web portal, except for CaptureCam, which snaps a photo automatically after too many failed unlock attempts or if you send a lock message to your phone and someone responds to it. The app sends CaptureCam photos to the email address registered with your McAfee account. McAfee's unique "Buddy List" feature lets you specify people to be notified if your device is lost, and who will serve as backups in case you forget your PIN. The Backup tab lets you back up files to McAfee's cloud servers. You can back up text messages, call logs, contacts, and media files, such as photos and videos. You can also restore data from the cloud to your device, or wipe your phone or tablet of user data. Only the Avast Mobile Security & Antivirus app had better backup features than McAfee, because Avast could back up installed apps as well as other data. By comparison, Lookout backed up only contact info, photos and call history; Norton backed up only contact info; and Kaspersky didn't back up anything at all. MORE: Mobile Security Guide: Everything You Need to Know Under the Web Security tab, the McAfee app protects the default Android browser, and only that browser, from loading malicious websites. Every other app we reviewed also protected the Chrome browser, and Avast went even further, covering Amazon's Silk browser and the Chinese Boat Browser. Avast is developing support for the popular Dolphin browser. Another McAfee feature scans Wi-Fi networks and warns you if a network isn't password-protected or if snoops are watching your Web traffic. Under the Privacy tab, McAfee has a few more data-protection features. McAfee's app can lock other apps individually; when locked, each requires your 6-digit McAfee PIN before granting access. You can also set up user profiles to control who can access apps, a feature that helps parents hand off devices to kids without worrying. We really like McAfee's Data Exposure feature, which scans apps to see how much data each one collects about you. The McAfee program also rates apps, shows which gather abnormal amounts of information and flags suspicious apps under the Notable Apps tab so you can review them. This is more thorough than Lookout's similar "Privacy Advisor" feature, but not as thorough as Avast's version, which breaks out your apps into detailed categories based on the type and quantity of information gathered. The last privacy feature lets you block calls and text messages based on several criteria. You can create a "NoList" (a blacklist) of telephone numbers to block, or a more restrictive "YesList" (whitelist) of approved numbers. You can choose to block text messages that contain certain keywords. You can also look at a Filter Log of blocked calls and texts. Kaspersky, Norton and Avast also have blacklist features, but only Avast gives users more nuanced control over these lists. Web portal McAfee's main website, www.mcafee.com, doesn't contain a direct link to the mobile app's Web portal sign-in. Instead, go to home.mcafee.com and click the Log In button on the upper right. Like the app, the McAfee Mobile Security Web portal's design is functional and full of information, without being overwhelming. Tabs at the top of the page correspond to devices registered to an individual McAfee account. Clicking a device's tab brings you to a page where you can remotely back up each device, view backed-up data, change a McAfee PIN, locate a device or make a device emit an alarm. You can also lock a phone or tablet so that only the PIN will open it (you can type a custom lockscreen message, too) and wipe the device's user data. MORE: 8 Best Android Backup Apps A "continuous tracking" feature, if enabled, will record your device's location every hour or every six hours. A side panel next to the list of the device's features makes it easy to chat with or call McAfee reps, or access a FAQ that walks you through the account's features. The site also has a mobile version customized for small screens. We'd like to see McAfee add the ability to access the CaptureCam feature directly from the Web portal. In the current app build, multiple failed unlock attempts trigger CaptureCam and send you an email automatically, but if you go looking for a button labeled "CaptureCam" on the Web portal, you're going to be disappointed. Premium vs. free The free version includes almost all McAfee Mobile Security's features, such as antivirus detection, browser protection and anti-theft features. The paid version only adds customer support and media backup, and removes the ads present in the free version. Verdict We were very impressed with McAfee Mobile Security's excellent malware detection, functional interface, huge range of features and expansive free offerings. McAfee gives you both a lot of options and a lot of details, but we never felt lost or overwhelmed. Our one serious issue with McAfee is that running the app's antivirus scan can result in a serious performance hit. It's also worth mentioning that Avast offers even more features than McAfee does, but for half the cost. For beginning mobile owners to more-advanced users, McAfee is an excellent Android antivirus app for a wide range of devices.