F-Safe Complete for Mac assessment – up to date for 2023

Worth When Reviewed

$89.99 (1 system), $119.99 (5 gadgets) First 12 months reductions obtainable

Greatest Costs In the present day: F-Safe Complete

Some safety merchandise that supply each Home windows and macOS variations appear to commit equal time and sources to each variations. Others extra closely favour the Home windows model, leaving the Mac version missing sure options and choices. Such is the case with F-Safe Complete for the Mac, which appears to be a full-featured safety program at first look however isn’t fairly on par with its Home windows counterpart.

Set up

To make use of F-Safe Complete, you possibly can choose one of many paid subscriptions proper off the bat or go for the free 30-day trial, all of which immediate you to arrange an account. The trial requires no bank card and even provides you free technical help if you happen to want it. On the primary display screen, you’re requested if you wish to add your individual system, your youngster’s system, or another person’s system. Selecting your individual system or a baby’s system then permits you to obtain the macOS model of the software program.

A wizard guides you thru the set up and deposits you on the program’s primary display screen the place you possibly can assessment the completely different security measures–Viruses & Threats, Password Vault, Privateness VPN, ID Monitoring, and Safe Searching. The software program additionally tries that can assist you by providing particular suggestions, comparable to establishing the password vault and turning on the VPN.

Options

Your first process will most likely be to hunt for malware. Clicking the Scan button runs a full scan that checks your complete system. Clicking the hyperlink for Viruses & Threats takes you to a different display screen the place you possibly can scan simply particular folders. Surprisingly, there are not any choices to run a fast scan and even to schedule a scan. (The Home windows model does allow you to run a fast scan). Right here, you’re additionally in a position to test for virus definition updates and submit a pattern of an contaminated file to the corporate for evaluation.

F-Safe offers real-time virus and adware scanning to mechanically block malware. You may exclude particular folders and information from the real-time scan and quickly disable the scanning if it’s interfering with a software program set up or different course of.

To enhance the common virus scanning, F-Safe offers an choice referred to as DeepGuard, which displays functions for any adjustments indicative of a malware an infection. This selection already consists of many gadgets within the record however you possibly can add the names and areas of different functions to observe.

Subsequent, you could wish to arrange the ID monitoring to test your e mail handle for information breaches amongst your on-line accounts. You may add as many as 10 addresses in addition to different gadgets, together with a username, cellphone quantity, social safety quantity, checking account quantity, bank card quantity, and passport quantity.

The VPN is one other protection you’d probably wish to allow, particularly when utilizing unprotected networks. By default, the VPN selects a location that gives the very best connection. However you possibly can swap to a different location, together with a number of throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. You’re additionally ready so as to add your individual private community as a trusted one to permit entry to native sources comparable to printers and scanners.

You may manually activate the VPN or set it to activate everytime you log into your Mac. The VPN additionally consists of monitoring safety to forestall advertisers from monitoring your on-line exercise and a kill swap to rapidly minimize off all web visitors if the connection goes down. By default, F-Safe makes use of OpenVPN because the VPN protocol, which ought to suffice in most conditions. You can too swap to OpenVPN (TCP) or IKEv2, each of that are briefly described in this system.

Subsequent, an choice for safe shopping means that you can set up a browser extension that goals to dam dangerous webpages. The extension helps Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge (by way of the Chrome Net Retailer). With Safe Searching energetic, the extension makes an attempt to dam phishing websites and different dangerous pages. You can too inform it to dam websites thought of untrustworthy or people who comprise prohibited content material. Additional, you’re in a position to manually add websites that you simply don’t need blocked and submit a pattern URL that you simply imagine is malicious.

Lastly, F-Safe affords a password vault that creates and shops safe logins for all of your accounts. To kick this off, you’re first requested to create your grasp password. Quite than enter this password every time it’s good to entry the vault, you possibly can as a substitute use Contact ID in your MacBook.

So as to add your account logins, you import an present record from Chrome, Firefox, Edge, LastPass, Dashlane, or one other packages or manually create a login with the mandatory username, password, and different particulars. An autofill choice mechanically enters your vault password at a saved web site and can supply to save lots of a password that you simply create. Nonetheless, there’s no password suggestion choice as is present in most password managers, so you need to devise your individual advanced passwords.

The required extension for the password vault formally helps Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Safari isn’t but supported, although F-Safe informed me that that is within the works. The vault may even analyze your saved passwords to point which of them are robust, weak, or reused.

Efficiency

Searching to the EICAR check virus web site triggered a message that the location was thought of dangerous. Forging forward by permitting entry to the location, I attempted downloading the eicar.com and eicar textual content information. Each had been mechanically eliminated however with none notification from F-Safe. I used to be in a position to obtain and extract the 2 eicar zip information. Upon extraction, the check malicious information within the archive had been eliminated. A handbook scan finally trashed the 2 zip information. Sadly, F-Safe doesn’t allow you to assessment blocked or deleted malicious information, and I couldn’t discover any setting that may quarantine information as a substitute of take away them.

A December 2022 assessment by AV-Take a look at gave F-Safe SAFE for macOS a rating of 4.5 out of 6 for defense and 5.5 out of 6 for usability.

Worth & Availability

F-Safe Complete prices $119.99/£99.99 for 5 gadgets, with the primary 12 months discounted to $69.99/£44.99. If you wish to shield only one Mac, it’s $89.99/£69.99 ($59.99/£34.99 after the low cost). 

This provides full entry to iOS apps in addition to the Mac ones, and naturally Android and Home windows ones as properly if required, and the cross-device configuration is managed by way of F-Safe internet accounts.

Relying upon what number of Macs, or different gadgets, want defending, F-Safe Complete could be fairly costly. Don’t neglect although that F-Safe Secure is on the market, and cheaper, if you happen to don’t need the VPN or ID Safety. F-Safe has no situation with you defending gadgets belonging to different folks, though in fact it’s all managed by way of your individual account.

See options in our roundup of the
finest antivirus software program for Macs.

Verdict

F-Safe for the Mac appears to have all the precise parts that may make it an efficient product. However provided that sure key choices are lacking or missing and this system prices $59.99/£34.99 a 12 months even with the low cost for one system, the Mac model needs to be extra succesful and higher designed.