McAfee Safe Connect VPN Review | Weak privacy and security (2023)

our verdict

McAfee Safe Connect is a US-based VPN service with apps for Windows, iOS, and Android. It's a fast VPN, but it suffers from poor security, an invasive logging policy, and a lack of customer support. It also doesn't unblock streaming services like Netflix. Conclusion: Avoid using McAfee VPN.

Ranked 43rd out of 56 VPNs

McAfee Safe Connect category claims

• Flow

  0,80,8/10

• Torrenting

  00,0/10

• privacy and registration

  11,0/10

• speed

  8.98,9/10

• server locations

  7.27.2/10

• circumvent censorship

  2.52,5/10

• security features

  3.63,6/10

• ease of use

  7.17.1/10

• Customer service

  44,0/10

• price value

  55,0/10

Pros and Cons of McAfee Safe Connect

Dados chave do McAfee Safe Connect

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Ranked #53 out of 56 VPNs for Privacy & Anti-Logging Policy

Here is the information that appears in McAfee's Privacy Policy:

McAfee stores this information indefinitely and only removes it upon account deletion. Even so, the data will be kept for 30 days.

McAfee also makes this information available to other McAfee companies, third party advertisers, and "service providers who provide services to us".

Specifically, McAfee Safe Connect shares its privacy policy with McAfee's broader cybersecurity product, and the policy makes no mention of Safe Connect VPNgeneral.

In fact, after we contacted McAfee, a representative confirmed that Safe Connect follows the same rules and standards as all other McAfee products.

McAfee claims this information is necessary to "protect" users and "run [McAfee's] business".

That's just a lie. There are a plethora of VPN services out there that protect their users and run their business without engaging in such intrusive data collection.

US ownership is problematic

McAfee Safe Connect is owned by McAfee LLC, the cybersecurity giant. McAfee LLC also ownsTunnelBear VPN (see our review), which he acquired in 2018.

Like its parent company, McAfee Safe Connect is headquartered in the United States in Silicon Valley. So McAfee's jurisprudence couldn't be much worse.The US is an absolutely horrible place to set up a VPN service.

The US is part of the Five-Eyes intelligence alliance, which means it shares surveillance data with the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Additionally, McAfee is subject to intrusive US legal policies, such as the infamous PRISM surveillance program, which allows the US government to monitor online communications from US-based technology companies.

Of greater concern, however, is the Stored Communications Act (SCA). This law gives the US government the ability to seize a VPN user's information if that information has been preserved.

This is a particular concern for Safe Connect, asMcAfee logs almost everything.

In addition, McAfee's privacy policy expressly states that it will disclose information to any lawful, governmental, or judicial authority upon request.

In short, McAfee Safe Connect VPN is bad for user privacy. To see the benefits of a reliable logless VPN, visit ourPrivate Internet Access Check.

Ranked 18th out of 56 VPNs for Speed

McAfee Safe Connect offers great speeds because it uses Hydra, Hotspot Shield's proprietary protocol. We cover more about the Hydra protocol in ourHotspot Shield review.

Hotspot Shield also licenses other VPN services to use the protocol. To learn more, read ourVerificando o Kaspersky Secure ConnectionEBitdefender VPN Review.

To test the speed of McAfee VPN, we connected to a VPN server close to our base in London.

Here are the full results of our local speed test:

As you can see, we only saw an 11% drop in download speed and an 8.73% drop in upload speed. This is impressive and matches the results of some of the top VPN services.

International speed test results

Speeds on international connections remained impressive. We saw a 37% drop in download speed when connected to a server on the east coast of the US and only 13% when connected to the Netherlands.

Ranked #47 out of 56 VPNs for Streaming

Similar to Private Tunnel, McAfeeadmits its poor streaming ability, which states: "Netflix and Hulu [...] may not work properly over secure VPN connection".

Most troubling, McAfee's customer service team was often surprised when we asked about Safe Connect's streaming capabilities. They even asked why we think using a VPN would unblock geo-restricted content.

From the company's point of view, what was confirmed in our tests is McAfee Safe Connectsimply no VPN for streaming.

For enhanced streaming, check out our top rated listsNetflix-VPNs,BBC iPlayer-VPNs, and generalVPN para streaming.

1. Monthly $7.99/Mobile Billed $7.99 per month
2. 12 month(s) $1.66/cell Billed $19.99 first year, $47.99 thereafter Save 79%

Here is a complete list of payment methods you can use to pay for McAfee VPN:

Ranked #48 out of 56 VPNs for Torrenting

Without a kill switch, you risk exposing your true IP address if your VPN connection drops for any reason. Furthermore, the incredible amount of information recorded by McAfee Safe Connect can easily be used to personally identify you.

This is a shame as our tests have shown that torrenting is allowed on all Safe Connect servers and their high upload speeds allow for fast P2P activity.

But torrenters should definitely choose a no-logs VPN provider that also offers a kill switch.

To find out which VPN services we recommend for P2P activities, check out our overviewThe Best VPNs for Torrenting.

These providers combine the strictest privacy policies with blazing fast speeds and no torrent restrictions.

Ranked #43 out of 56 VPNs for security and technical features

McAfee Safe Connect runs on the mysterious Catapult Hydra VPN protocol, which makes it a bit risky when it comes to your online security.

The choice of Catapult Hydra concerns us for several reasons. First, McAfee nowhere states that this is the chosen protocol. When asked, several support representatives stated that this was simply "information that should not be shared with customers".

Almost all other VPN providers will definitely state the chosen VPN protocol, including those that also use Catapult Hydra, such as Hotspot Shield and Kaspersky Secure Connection.

As a result, McAfee's secrecy immediately makes us suspicious, and rightfully so.

2018,A major vulnerability in Catapult Hydra has been discoveredby independent security researcher Paulos Yibelo. This flaw meant that user data, such as the user's country and the name of their WiFi network, could be obtained by third parties.

In conjunction with other publicly available data, this information may be used to locate and personally identify a user.

A fix for the vulnerability was quickly released, but the fact that it initially escaped the network points to Catapult Hydra's larger problem. It's still not transparent enough.

On the other hand, our favorite VPN protocol, OpenVPN, has been around since 2001 - it's had a lot more time to prove itself and refine its methods through its open source community.

However, our biggest concern is that McAfee Safe ConnectMissing a kill switch on all platforms.

A kill switch is a feature that blocks web traffic in the event of a VPN connection drop. This means that if this happens while Safe Connect is running, your IP address could be exposed, compromising your online privacy.

There are also no advanced security features like split tunneling or manual port selection.

At a minimum, McAfee Safe Connect uses AES-256 encryption. Most major VPN services prefer this encryption method, which does not yet need to be cracked.

Safe Connect also passed our IP and DNS leak tests. This is shown in the image below where we are connecting from our base in London to a server on the east coast of the US.

While the use of AES-256 and IP and DNS leak protection is encouraging, it is still far from sufficient to compensate for Safe Connect's deficiencies in encryption and security quality.

We simply cannot rely on McAfee Safe Connect to keep your online activity anonymous, and neither should you.

McAfee Safe Connect offers apps for the following platforms:

Ranked #35 out of 56 VPNs for Ease of Use

1. Selecting a server in McAfee Safe Connect VPN for Windows

2. Selecting a Server in McAfee Safe Connect VPN for iOS

1. Select settings in McAfee Safe Connect VPN for Windows

2. Choose settings in McAfee Safe Connect VPN for iOS

Ranked #45 out of 56 VPNs for Bypassing Web Censorship

To bypass the so-called Great Firewall of China, VPNs must use intelligent obfuscation tools that mask VPN data and make it appear as regular HTTPS web traffic.

Only the best VPN providers consistently bypass government-imposed restrictions, so it's no surprise that McAfee Safe Connect falls short here.

McAfee Safe Connect does not have the necessary obfuscation tools and therefore cannot circumvent censorship laws in China or other regions.

Even if that weren't the case, Safe Connect's overly intrusive no-logs policy means it would be a simply terrible VPN to use in heavily censored regions.

By recording your IP address, device MAC address, GPS location, and biometric information, McAfee makes it easy for any government to identify you.

If you want to know which VPNs work in countries with high censorship, read our article about them.The Best VPNs to Bypass Censorship.

Ranked 44th out of 56 VPNs for Customer Support

McAfee shares a knowledge base for its entire suite of products, but with a total of 360 articles,only eightof them mention Safe Connect.

As with the rest of Safe Connect, it again proves to be McAfee's neglected child.

Although Safe Connect has a phone number you can reach, we were told on two separate occasions that we would be called back and those calls never came through.

Frustratingly, live chat disconnects multiple times during a conversation. Most of the time it reconnects, but we lost contact completely on a few occasions.

McAfee Safe Connect shares a support infrastructure with the broader McAfee product line and it is clear that agents have not been adequately trained to use the VPN product.

The support team was unable to answer routine questions e.g. B. whether Safe Connect can be used to bypass geo-restricted content and how many VPN servers there are in total.

Furthermore, Safe Connect appears to have been stifled by McAfee's legacy. For example, you are forced to provide your full name, email address and phone number before starting a live chat.

For a product that exists to protect your personal information, the requirement to provide information that can be used to personally identify you is self-defeating.

The Safe Connect support team is also extremely persistent when it comes to taking control of your device remotely. For example, we were asked to allow remote access after asking a simple question about US Netflix access.

All of this is extremely disgusting and unnecessary. Especially for privacy-conscious users, the idea of ​​sharing your phone number and allowing remote access for basic issues might be overkill.