Expert review
Positives
- Lots of guidance on safe habits
- Many smart functions
- Affordable
Disadvantages
- Theft protection would have been nice
Our verdict
It’s not the cheapest, but for the base price you actually get an unusual amount, including a good VPN service. Excellent extra social media security is a bonus.
Price upon review
From $39.99 per year
Best prices today: McAfee Mobile Security
Free
With McAfee Mobile Security you get sufficient virus protection. According to AV-Test’s review, it lets through the occasional malware attack, but very few, and still beats Google Play Protect by a narrow margin. And there are even more reasons to get it.
There are some great tools that can help you live a safer online life. The browser protection scans links not only on the Internet, but also in social media and messaging services, and warns you if you are about to visit risky sites. There is also a phishing protection that includes security checks via SMS and Wi-Fi.
There’s also identity monitoring that tracks email addresses, phone numbers, credit cards, passports, bank accounts, credit cards and more. It alerts you if information about them has been leaked online. It’s better than most similar services, which only check email addresses.
The premium subscription that I tested also gives you access to a well-functioning VPN service that you can in principle always have active to surf more anonymously. It has servers in about 40 countries around the world that you can freely choose from, and many of them are quite fast, if not exactly great. Don’t expect to be able to use it for video streaming, although it is possible, on and off.
Interface and features
Mobile Security has a nice airy interface with clear panels that provide quick access to the most important features. But the individual functions and panels are unnecessarily large for a compact mobile app, so you have to do a lot of scrolling to reach them all.
At the top is a row called quick actions, with actions that the app says should be performed. Initially, these are things like giving the app the right permissions so that it can do its work.
Then you’ll get periodic reminders to do scans and other things to keep your phone safe. However, it’s a bit annoying that some actions keep appearing even though I’ve recently done and checked them off. It is disturbingly rarely empty in the ‘to-do list’.
Beware of the price
There are several options, but choose wisely. The two-year plans are the best value starting at £19.99 per year for Basic (single device), which renews for £79.99 per year.
You can then select Plus for five devices for £22.49 per year (renewed for £95.99 per year) or Ultimate for £27.49, which gives you 10 devices (renewed for £109.99 per year).
All of the above are Total Protection subscriptions, so you can use the software on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac. There is a 30 day money back guarantee.
In the US, plans start at $39.99 per year for Essential and increase to $89.99 per year for Advanced (Individual) and $119.99 per year for Advanced (Family). View all the details here.
You can also choose to skip the payment step entirely. Then you get the virus protection, which checks if the installed apps are safe, and allows you to manually scan the system. You also get two bonus features: manual Wi-Fi security check and manual scan for leaked email addresses.
Specifications
- McAfee mobile security
- Android 9+
- App control
- Privacy overview
- Browser protection
- VPN
- Wi-Fi control
- Backup
- Identity monitoring
This article originally appeared in our sister publication PC for Alla and was translated and adapted from Swedish.
