For context, I’m an IT technician and I’ve been on the field for over 14 years and the most common problem that I’ve found when customers say that their brand NEW laptop “doesn’t work” or “is slow” it means that the third-party antivirus is ravaging their laptop, which 19 out of 20 times is either McAfee or Avast. Of all the antivirus systems that I have seen over the years, there has never been a more toxic, useless and unbearable antivirus than McAfee.
I’ll talk about what I learned, but short version: Do not install McAfee, if you have it, remove it. It’s a horrible software that ingrains into your computer and slows it down to a crawl, you only have it installed because it’s a paid promotion, meaning SPAM. Windows Defender is the best antivirus that an everyday user could ever ask for, and you already have it installed.
You would think it’s a “choice”, if you can’t run it, don’t install it, sounds fair and I agree. But this horrible company forced its way into most common laptops by paying a lot money to other companies like Lenovo, Dell, Asus and HP, among others, to have it installed by default, even when these laptops can’t handle it. Avast is also doing this, and they’re still horrible, but at least they allow you to uninstall it, even if it leaves traces that you’ll never find.
Tinfoil hat comment: I’m pretty sure they also pay prolific news companies (like Screen Rant, WIRED and The Verge) to discredit Windows Defender just in case people want to know if they should install a third-party antivirus or not, and the answer is no, you don’t need to. Unless you are a very high profile person and you are actively being hunted for your specific data, you will never need a specialized antivirus, Windows Defender will do just fine against threats and even better than most security softwares out there, don’t get fooled by news articles and crappy websites, not even by my own opinion, go to your local IT professional and ask them.
As a technician, it’s a pain to remove, it’s a simple process, but it takes a long time, and it’s frustrating how user-hostile it is, when it should be as easy as click Uninstall, but that’s not how it works for McAfee, Avast and those kind of toxic antivirus.
As a user (admin on your own PC), you’ll need IT support, you don’t have permission to uninstall it on your own PC, you can try, but even do it, or if you download an advanced uninstaller, such as IObit, or figure out how to force the uninstall using CMD, it won’t do it for McAfee, it has a built-in unavoidable trigger that forces you to download their own uninstaller if you attempt to uninstall it and even worst, this uninstaller does not come with the program. Funny enough, when you actually use their uninstaller, one of the required steps is to select which products from McAfee you want to uninstall while showing you a list with no products and the button “Cancel”, so the only option is to click cancel and doing over and over again until you get lucky and the “Select Product” window doesn’t load, because they can’t even scam you correctly. This is yet another tactic that they use to avoid users from uninstalling this cancerous “antivirus”.
Even then (still as a user), when you manage to find and trigger the hidden unistall function, it installs other programs that you agreed to install behind your back. Wait, you didn’t? Too bad, if you want to uninstall this crap, you have to agree to a ToS that literally says they will track your current data usage and internet packages, and they can push-install whatever they want without asking or showing anything. If you disagree to this, they cancel the process and McAfee doesn’t uninstall.
I’ll leave you with this: the definition of malware is a software that is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system.
Sounds a lot like McAfee.