[WIN10] McAfee

A years subscription to McAfee was included with my new laptop.
I been told it slows the computer down.
Should I uninstall it ?

 

depends if you like bathsalts.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Windows Defender.

 

Both McAfee and Norton products slow the shit out of the computer. Considering the number of products both companies try to flog to the consumer via misleading popups, they're almost Malware in themselves.

 

I've found Windows Defender to be good enough together with the free version of Malwarebytes.

Windows Defender is not perfect though. Recently I got a message generated by Defender about suspicious activity caused by a file Win32/PowEmotet.SB. I worked out that it was to do with my Brother printer. Every time I tried to print with my Brother printer the Win32/PowEmotet.SB file was removed making my printer useless. I told Defender to allow the file and then my printer worked. Then I found that I wasn't alone in having the problem. The following article explained that the Win32/PowEmotet.SB file not being allowed by Windows Defender was a false positive. Had I not taken a chance by allowing Win32/PowEmotet.SB because it was to do with the Brother printer software and was probably okay I might have gone back to an earlier Acronis image of my system to see if I could fix it only to discover that Windows Defender still blocked it.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...er-scares-admins-with-emotet-false-positives/

 

I haven't found an AV product yet that doesn't occasionally come up with false positives.

 

You don't need it unless:
- If you are using it for work and your IT requires it.
- It has a specific feature/function you want or need.

Beyond that, they always give you a free trial subscription. It's how they sucker you in.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone.
I'll remove it but it may be hard to get rid of.
Any recommendation for an uninstall program.

 

Go to Control Panel/Programs and Features and it should be listed as one of the programs you can uninstall. After uninstalling it you could install CC Cleaner free version and use it to clean the registry of any remnants.

 

If normal uninstall method doesn't work, Mcafee have an official product removal tool which works very well: https://service.mcafee.com/?articleId=TS101331&page=shell&shell=article-view

 

Personally I wouldn't use it when there are so many other better (imo) alternatives out there, which have a much lighter footprint and will not bog your system down, which it's been known to do.

Plus doing the usual stuff: don't visit dodgy sites, don't open files from unknown/untrusted sources, etc.