I am a pretty simple guy with expectations regarding virus protection: protect my computers from viruses.

I am a pretty savvy computer user, but I “got – got” a few days ago. I received an email which looked like it was from FedEx saying they needed me to print out a label and re-do it as the delivery failed. It was a virus. I have a bunch of deliveries going on right now and didn’t even clue into the fact that it didn’t make sense – only thing I was thinking was “which delivery is having an issue?”.

So I did the stupid thing; I double clicked on the ZIP file and the internal .exe (Insert cringe). Sure enough, it launched the live platinum security virus. Here is where I get very disappointed with McAfee. I have been a customer for a very long time – and McAfee failed. You can see where McAfee has failed others on this front here (their community site – many threads on this topic). Not only did it allow the install of a known piece of malware, it also failed to identify it on the full system scan I did.

I had to go and download a free malware removal tool to stop it and luckily I caught it before it did real damage.

This really irritates me. I have the McAfee family plan – pay yearly and religiously – and McAfee failed. They will come up with some excuse (it is Malware, not a virus – or some nonsense like that) – but I don’t care. In my eyes they failed.

If you cannot stop such an obvious and well known issue why do I have you? McAfee All Access – Total Protection needs to be renamed to “Not quite total protection – you should probably just go with freeware”. A bit wordy – I know, but perhaps they can find a catch acronym.

Of interest, when I could not get the .zip to work on my PC I ran to the iMac and did the same thing. The iMac didn’t get infected (and McAfee is on that PC also – but really does nothing).