UKC

Hi,

 I have just had a McAfee (Livesafe) subscription auto renew..These are the features it say I have

Secure VPN 

Virus Protection Pledge

McAfee Mobile Security

I also have a Microsoft Personal account - assume that all the safety features I need are on the Windows account.

What do I actually need to worry about? I used to have a VPN when I was abroad, but not now, I am in the UK...

Thanks!

McAfee is terrible, get rid of it and use Windows Defender.

Thanks! Yes, they keep on trying to sell me other things!

OK, So it looks like that I currently have Windows Defender Firewall (Currently connected to my home wifi).

Anything else?

Thanks

I don't think I've used a third party virus protection for about 10 years.

I just rely on Windows defender.

Avoid dodgy sites and downloading and running things you don't know what they are and it appears to be all that's needed.

That's interesting. I see it comes free with Windows 11. I've been paying for Norton for years and years. Would it be safe to bin it and trust Defender?

Yes, the biggest security issue with Windows is usually situated between the back of the seat and the keyboard.

I've not used third-party AV for decades.

I do, however, use a VPN.

Yes, it's much safer to use Defender than any of these third party AVs, they really are bad or even outright malware/spyware themselves. Windows Defender is really good.

You just need Windows' inbuilt AV and firewall 👍 if you need a VPN I would find a dedicated provider 

I'm curious about VPN for accessing foreign TV but hadn't considered security.

Is the VPN* to protect privacy as I don't see how it protects security?

*any "malign bytes" will still get through, it's just they've gone through a secure and obfuscating link (VPN), does that anonymity make you less exploitable? Or does VPN block sites serving "malign bytes"?

I agree, avoid third party anti virus, just use Microsoft's.

For me, my VPN is mostly about privacy. I've nothing particularly worthy of hiding, I just don't see why others see my data, browsing habits, and personal information as fair game. But then, I am a bit odd!

It depends

To be honest, you get what you pay for! I use Proton VPN and I pay for an annual subscription that covers all my devices, provides me with an email address (and aliases), a password vault, and online storage.

Proton VPN does employ an ad blocker which (it claims) blocks ads, trackers, and malicious scripts.

https://protonvpn.com/features

There are other providers (many of them free!) and it's worth doing a comparison. However, for those of you who have not used VPNs, there can be lag (because you're adding additional jumps) and this can be a problem from time-to-time (although, I don't usually have trouble streaming video). There are also some websites that won't serve VPN traffic (podback.org springs to mind) and you have to go commando if you want to link to their web pages.

I also use DuckDuckGo for my web browser and my search engine.

As well as defender,  I still continue to use Spybot as a period scan and check.  It rarely finds anything of significance.

Is it worth using at all?

Thanks. Good points.

Windows Defender is fine.  Wouldn't bother with any of the other junk.

Having more than one AV can cause problems. Windows Defender on its own is enough along with the usual sensible habits of not downloading or clicking on links etc. without good reason.

I would add to this having a separate admin account alongside the day to day one. Gives an extra "are you sure" if you do click on something at random.

Or, just switch to Linux where this functionality is built in by default. Most Linux distros are free to download and use.

Plus, most software is free (and often better than the Windows alternative), there are fewer threats in the wild (so, no need for AV software at all), and security updates are released when they are built and tested (not in one big lump).

Linux Mint looks and feels very similar to windows and it'll run on older hardware, consuming fewer system resources leaving more for the user to play with.

There can be issues with support and getting hardware configured but that's much less common nowadays and there's plenty of community support. If you have an old laptop lying around, give Ubuntu or Mint a try.

Most of the time, on Windows, and even when using an administrator account, software isn't running with admin/raised privileges. Thats what the UAC prompt and "Run as Administrator" is for.

Or am I misunderstanding your point?

Suggesting that non-technical people run a standard distrp for desktop use is bad advice imo. They're just going to be swapping one set of frustrations for an entirety different, potentially larger, unknow set -- and with fewer opportunities to seek and obtain help.

Linux is a great OS on the server and on mobile. But for individual, non-technical desktop use, Windows is much more widely deployed and battle-tested.

For people who really can't use Windows (eg. due to lack of compatible hardware) ChromeOS or a Chromebook is my (reluctant) default advice.

UAC actually somewhat decreases security because its prompt pops up so often most users are simply conditioned to click on "allow" every-time, and it's not descriptive enough.

When do you regularly see it apart from when you're installing software? I'd be very surprised if most users see it very often at all. Completely agree that people can still default to just clicking "yes", so there is still an advantage to running a separate admin account, but hardly anybody bothers to do that, so UAC is still better than nothing. I can see an argument that it's not much better than nothing, but I don't see how it makes things worse.

Well, you shouldn't ever see an elevation prompt when installing software apart from HW drivers. Alas, lots of apps still pull an UAC prompt, even if they aren't kernel-level drivers.

A much better prompt would have actually told the user what elevation is needed, something like the granular user access on Mac OS (i.e. microphone access to file system access, however the Mac OS implementation still has plenty of faults).

Second, a better system would ask for admin privileges, while still allowing installing most apps without any. Mac OS doesn't need root access to install 90% of its apps, since they don't need any, they just copy an app bundle into a directory.

UAC is simply overused and given the MS kernel model, any app that even partially interacts with the kernel needs it. Which is simply bad, because that leads to such faults as the infamous Crowdstrike...

You're right, Andy; we wouldn't want the non-technical people getting ideas above their station, would we? Maybe, instead of offering the spyware that is Chrome, we should just tell people who ask for help to buy a new computer and save them any bother of trying to fix a problem. 

But, let's assume for a minute that our ​​​​​​OP is smart enough to ignore unsuitable (for their skillset) suggestions or, perhaps, curious enough to explore alternatives to the bloatware that is Windows we might be pleasantly surprised by the results. 

Is it a simple process to deinstall McAfee and awaken Defender and the Microsoft firewall? What kind of pitfalls await the naive user? The house PC will need updating when Windows 10 goes unsupported this summer, McAfee subscription renews in April if I keep it going but I would not install it on the new machine, so what risk attaches to dumping it now?

Cheers in anticipation,

Pete

Uninstalling McAfee can be tricky because it doesn't really want you to do it, but there are resources to help. They have this webpage:

https://www.mcafee.com/support/s/article/000001616?language=en_US

And a bit of googling (doing a google search for reddit results is often good) can help further.

I've never done it as whenever I buy a windows laptop the first thing I do is to wipe it clean and do a fresh install of windows to get rid of whatever bloatware it comes with. There aren't any pitfalls to using windows defender as it's now more effective than the paid alternatives because so many computers use it that its threat library is the biggest and most up to date. People just think it's no good because it's free. It's easy to use as well so being a naive user isn't a problem. There is also a risk to keeping Mcafee as it is so bad.

I don't know much about this windows 10 to 11 thing because I only use Linux now but if 10 isn't going to get security updates then I would switch to 11 even if that means getting a new machine. Other people who use windows will know more about this. There's always Linux Mint which is free, consumes a tiny fraction of the resources that Windows does, doesn't spy on you and feels very similar. It's not for everyone, the normal reaction is 'Linux is painful' but it's much less of a faff than it used to be.

Way to over-react...

My comment had nothing to do with "station" or status or whatever - just an awareness that, for most people, what matters is the applications not the OS. They broadly dont care about ideology or free software. They want to get things done using a well-behaved appliance.

People want to be able to run Office, Photoshop, etc. Sure you can put Libre Office or Gimp on a Linux machine - and they're good applications - but they're often not what people want because they're not mainstream. They also want to run the applications they've already paid for, and they dont want to mess with VMs or WINE to do it.

The hardware matters too and, for desktop/laptop, Linux's hardware support isn't as good as Windows. That not because Linux is technically deficient, but because (like it or not) in 2025 Linux is predominantly a server and mobile OS - with desktop use being pretty niche. I don't see that charging - in fact as desktops and laptops increasingly become business tools and personal computer use migrates to mobiles, I can image Linux's desktop share is going to reduce still further, even as its domination of the overall OS space massively increases.

Android and ChromeOS are obviously built on Linux, but a great deal of work has been done to make those OSs easy to use and self-maintaining. With the best will in the world thats just not true for Linux Mint or Ubuntu or whatever.

I have no idea if the OP is a "technical" user (whatever that even means...). Neither, it seems, do you. I wrote my comment in the context of someone I didn't know posting a general IT question on a climbing/outdoors site. If this was unix.stackexchange.com then I'd have phrased it differently and/or made different suggestions. But this is where we are.

The official Microsoft line is that updates for Windows 10 will cease on 14th October 2025.

But, as I posted in a recent thread (see: https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/pc_memory_and_junk_file_clean_u...):

" ... it's still not really clear exactly what's happening with Windows 10  - Microsoft has a history of continuing security updates long after threatened cut-off dates.

"Beyond that, Microsoft are currently advertising extended support (even for individual users), at a cost:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updat...

"So that could be a useful approach for some. When first announced late last year, the UK cost was supposed to be £30 for the first year."

Anecdotally: Microsoft continued to supply security updates for Windows 7 long after the official cut-off date for that OS. And Microsoft has no interest in seeing large numbers of Windows 10 machines become compromised by malware after October of this year. Obviously, Microsoft would prefer all Windows 10 users to upgrade, but the likelihood is that they are waiting to see what will happen.

It wasn't an over-reaction Andy, I simply found your post to be patronising and somewhat condescending.

OK, no argument there then.

I'm sorry, who appointed you to speak for what everyone else wants? 

How do you know that the OP isn't willing to consider an alternative to Windows? Have you asked the OP? Have I missed the post where the OP says that no alternative to Windows is acceptable?

More to your point of "paid" apps; the build-in obsolescence model of Windows apps means that users often find themselves in a continual loop of subscription/payments for software that they thought that they already "owned" (because few of us ever read the EULA).

The OP is a case in point: "please pay to upgrade your AV" (or, more accurately, "we've auto-renewed your subscription and it's too late to change your mind") - a whole industry predicated on the fact that Windows is (and always has been) susceptible to bad actors.  I think that you described this as "battle tested"

Well, now you're just talking out of your arse.

https://linux-hardware.org/?view=computers

The above link will give you details of 280,000 tested computers (or, so it claims). You can run Ubuntu on pretty much any machine fewer than ten years old and have been able to for years. 

Oh, and if you (or anyone else) should be seeking assistance, there's a pretty vibrant support hub here:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/

Easy to use and self-maintaining is the problem!

BTW, I'm not sure what you think is "self-maintaining" about the W10 - W11 upgrade - most machines simply can't run W11 because.....

Wait for it...

....the hardware isn't supported.

Yeah, who would have thought that? A whole new round of buying software

No, I don't know and, unlike you, I didn't assume as much. I simply offered an alternative to be considered rather than mandating "the right answer".

Actually, what you said was:

But, you may have meant "in general" and just forgot to type it.

Replying to myself, to add this link for interest:

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwid...

For now, the uptake of Windows 11 is still relatively low, when compared to Windows 10.

I have a Windows 7 virtual machine that still gets daily Security Intelligence Updates for Microsoft Security Essentials.  It even gets the occasional Malicious Software Removal Tool update; in fact it got v5.132 just last week.

That's helpful to know.

My own 'prediction' (meaningless, I know) is that Microsoft will continue to supply security updates for Windows 10 long after the currently-threatened cut-off date. But - we will see what happens.