McAfee, founded in 1987, is a well-established internet security company that has been working on recovering its reputation since their software caused major problems for millions in April 2010. This incident inspired all internet security companies to react to the reality of what could happen to their customers if their software let one bit of malware pass through. Since then McAfee has been fortifying their security and adding new features to their security suites.

However, McAfee is not there yet. In the internet security arena, even a 1 percent error rate is too much. In the most recent March-June 2011 AV-Comparatives tests, McAfee earned an overall protection rate of 93.5%. In August 2011, AV-Test only granted them 4 of 6 points for protection, and they scored even lower in repair. In fact, they did not earn AV-Test certification in 2010 or 2011. They passed their VB100 tests running Windows XP and Vista, but they failed their last Windows 7 test. However, their enterprise versions have tested well with West Coast Labs and the International Computer Security Association. Though a score in the 90s may earn you an A in school, in the internet security realm a 1 percent error rate can potentially allow millions of malware access to your PC and personal information. Even though we do not rate internet security software on test results alone, they do give us a good idea of how well we can expect them to perform against prevalent zero-day threats. If you do not engage in high-risk online activities and are internet savvy, McAfee will satisfy your needs. However, if you like to view random videos online, share files with torrent sites or click interesting links without worrying about the consequences – you may want to look at one of our higher-ranked suites.

In regard to the features McAfee Internet Security includes, they have that locked down. It includes most of the elements that a complete internet security solution should have, such as parental controls, a two-way firewall, website ratings, spam filters and custom scans. It has settings for running scans using minimal resources, and it has a protected mode that will warn you of potentially dangerous websites and require you to enter a password to visit them. This is a good tool for preventing others from downloading dangerous files. This security suite is only missing a few minor features. For example, we could not find a tool for creating a rescue CD that can boot your computer. This is a helpful tool should you need to boot your computer after a virus locks you out of Windows.

Should you need assistance installing or configuring McAfee internet security or have a billing issue, you can contact McAfee by telephone, email or chat. However, many of their services do require a service fee. They offer setup help, virus removal, troubleshooting and remote support for fee. Free support includes their product guides, data sheets and troubleshooting information. On their "contact us" page it suggests that you visit support for phone numbers and email address; however, when you click that support link it takes you to a page that advertises their paid support options. Actually finding their customer service numbers takes a bit more work. We eventually found their phone number through the site map. We found this runaround annoying and rate services higher that make it easy for customers to find their contact information and get the support they need easily.