McAfee Safe Connect VPN Review

Privacy

When you connect to a VPN, you’re trusting that company with your internet traffic. The service encrypts the data from your ISP, but the VPN can potentially see everything.

A VPN will encrypt your online traffic and hide your IP address, but for you to enjoy internet access, the VPN server to which you’re connected has the encryption keys. That means the VPN server itself, or the VPN company can potentially be the source of a leak if the company lacks appropriate privacy and security measures.

So how does McAfee do in that regard?

Headquarters in the U.S

Quick history lesson. The U.S is a member of Five Eyes, an international alliance of countries that can legally force companies to give their governments customers’ data. This applies to any company headquartered in the U.S, which includes McAfee (they’re based in San Jose, California). Now, this wouldn’t be a huge problem if they barely kept any of our data but, as you’ll read below, this is far from the case.

It’s important to note that the government won’t take your data just because. Government agencies need a valid reason to request a person’s information from a company. They must also follow a legal process, which includes getting a court order. Usually, the government exercises the power to request information for use in court, criminal investigation, or preventing terrorism and threats to national security.

The FBI is probably not interested in your Netflix habits, but the legal framework for data requests exists, and that’s worth considering. Law enforcement agencies send hundreds of thousands of data requests to tech companies every year. That’s why we generally prefer VPN providers based in privacy-friendly jurisdictions like Switzerland or Panama. But if a company has good privacy practices, we’re open to giving it our seal of approval even though it’s based in a high-risk country like the U.S. That brings us to our next topic: Does McAfee have good privacy practices?

Logging Policy

A company won’t have any information to give the government if it doesn’t collect sensitive data in the first place. By ‘sensitive data,’ we mean your original IP address and the websites you visit. If a VPN logs those, anyone with that information will be able to connect the dots and figure out your past online activities. On the other hand, VPNs that don’t log those are called “no-logs” VPNs. Where does McAfee fall?

Unfortunately, McAfee’s privacy policy reads like a data collector’s wishlist. True no-log VPNs only keep minimal operational data. However, McAfee’s policy explicitly states they may collect substantial information about your usage.

On top of that, the privacy policy of McAfee itself states that the company may collect information, including:

• Mailing address
• Phone number
• Username
• Password
• Timestamps of connections
• IP addresses of devices
• Browser type
• Geo-location information
• Information from third parties

Between this extensive data collection and McAfee’s location in a Five Eyes country, this isn’t the VPN we’d recommend to someone looking to protect their privacy. We’d suggest VPNs like Surfshark and NordVPN instead. They have undergone independent audits confirming they don’t log user activity.

Security

Privacy aside, McAfee Safe Connect VPN takes a decent amount of effort to encrypt our data and hide it from our ISP, at the very least. So although they keep a ton of our data (and could potentially share it with the U.S government), at the very least their encryption methods are sound.

Encryption Methods

McAfee Safe Connect uses AES-256 encryption, which is the gold standard in the industry. Trying to crack this encryption would take the world’s fastest supercomputer billions of years, so it’s pretty secure. The U.S. government even uses AES-256 to protect classified information.

Kill Switch

A kill switch is a failsafe that shuts down all web browsers in case a VPN fails, and while the Windows McAfee Safe Connect VPN has one, the iOS and Android apps do not. This definitely makes the McAfee Safe Connect VPN a better VPN for Windows users rather than iPhone or Android users.

Multi-Hop

Multi-hop (also known as double VPN) routes your traffic through two or more servers for extra security. McAfee Safe Connect doesn’t offer this feature, which isn’t surprising given its focus on simplicity over advanced privacy features.

Dynamic IP Addresses

On a more positive note, we loved the fact that every time we connected to McAfee Safe Connect VPN, our device’s private IP address was replaced with a totally new and unique one. For a hacker trying to trace our online activity, essentially changing our disguises frequently made that an impossibility, or near.

DNS Leaks

Sure, McAfee claims that with their VPN turned on, our ISP can’t see our domain names, the names of the websites we visit. But we decided to test that out for sure using a website called, plainly, DNSLeakTest.com. The verdict? No leaks, making McAfee Safe Connect VPN pass the bare minimum that we expect from these Virtual Private Networks.

WebRTC Leaks

Lastly, we also want to make sure that our private IP address isn’t being leaked as well. We found that out by testing for WebRTC leaks, a technology that lets browsers save bandwidth by communicating directly with each other, which requires knowing the other’s private IP address. WebRTC is enabled by default on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera browsers. Using a tool from the ExpressVPN website, we found no WebRTC leaks with McAfee Safe Connect VPN connected. Woohoo!

Features

Privacy and security aside, there are a few extra features we like to see in VPNs, but they’re not dealbreakers by any means.

Split Tunneling

When we tested out the McAfee Safe Connect VPN on Android, we could route some of our traffic directly to the public Wi-Fi network to save on bandwidth, a process called split tunneling. This is handy when you want to use a VPN for sensitive activities like banking while allowing other traffic (like news sites) to use your normal connection. Unfortunately, you can only use this feature on Android devices.

>> Related: Compare NordVPN to McAfee

Netflix

We found McAfee’s streaming capability hit and miss. Some days Netflix worked perfectly. Other days we got that dreaded proxy error. In our testing, McAfee worked with Netflix about 40 percent of the time, which isn’t great if you only want a VPN for streaming. However, if streaming Netflix on a VPN is your biggest goal, we recommend one of the best VPNs for Netflix as the most surefire option.

Torrenting

Torrenting, on the other hand, worked with the McAfee Safe Connect VPN much more consistently in our testing. While its privacy issues preclude it from being one of the best VPNs for torrenting, if those aren’t a concern for you, then McAfee Safe Connect VPN can definitely get the job done when it comes to torrenting.

Pricing

McAfee’s pricing structure is simple. The renewal rates might catch you off guard if you’re not reading the fine print.

If you purchase the VPN standalone, you’re looking at $29.99 for the first year (that’s about $2.50 per month). However, the price jumps to $89.99 per year when you renew, which is one of the steepest hikes we’ve seen.

Lastly, if you’re worried about buyer’s remorse, McAfee gives a 30-day money-back guarantee. If the VPN doesn’t work out for you, you can cancel and get your money back within the first 30 days.

Speed

VPNs will always slow down your connection. Your data has to travel further and go through encryption/decryption processes. Some VPNs handle this better than others. Let’s see how McAfee performs.

iPhone 11 Pro Max

Testing out McAfee Safe Connect VPN on our iPhone, we only saw our upload speed increase by 16 percent and our download speed increase by 23 percent. That would be great, except for the fact that we had 660 percent more latency. Yikes!

Windows 10 Aspire 5

Strangely, we also had a ton of latency on our Windows 10 Aspire 5, 600 percent more, if you can believe it. But when it came to download and upload speed differences, we only had increases of nine and twelve percent, respectively.

In sum? If you’re a gamer and latency is your enemy, stay far away from the McAfee Safe Connect VPN (but also, we recommend doing your own speed tests in the free trial period).

Servers

Although they’re based in the U.S, the McAfee Safe Connect VPN has 2,000 servers in 23 countries. Sure, it’s not the largest VPN network we’ve ever seen, but if you want to connect to a server in any of the following countries, you’re in luck:

• Australia
• Argentina
• Brazil
• Canada
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• India
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Romania
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• U.K
• U.S.

App

Last but certainly not least, let’s talk about McAfee Safe Connect VPN’s mobile applications.

iOS App

Called the Safe VPN Connect— VPN Proxy, the iOS app has a four-star rating, and we found it really easy to navigate.

Android App

Also user-friendly, the Android Safe Connect VPN: Proxy Wi-Fi Hotspot, Secure VPN, is a great choice for Android-users (despite its long name).

While McAfee Safe Connect VPN lacks a macOS app, iPhone and Android-users should have no issues getting it up and running on their phones and tablets.

Summary

Clearly, the McAfee Safe Connect VPN is not without its issues, so it’s not for everyone. However, some people may be looking for different things from their VPN, so we broke down who we think it would be good for below.

If you’re a Mac-user, a good place for you to start would be our list of the best VPNs for Mac. Or, if you want to take it back to basics, read our VPN guide to see what to look for.