Intego vs McAfee: Which antivirus is better in 2022?

I installed the Intego VirusBarrier X9 package coupled with NetBarrier (version 10.9.20). I did this because I'd experienced some odd behavior from my MacBook Pro (Mojave, 10.14.6, Mid 2015). To make matters worse, I experienced some nasty ID Theft and other hits. Not fun. At first, it was very helpful. I liked the interface a whole lot better than anything Symantec provided. I've used Symantec products since 1988. Moving wasn't an easy decision but I'd read some encouraging reviews. The price helped as well. In the beginning, I didn't experience any problems; however, I hooked up an old external hard-drive and discovered a couple of infected files & applications. VirusBarrier did a great job fixing the files—I ended up deleting them anyway (they were really old) but it certainly lived up to its promises. The files/applications in question were quite old (at least 15-years) so no tears were shed. ...and then, strange problems started up... Like all virus checking programs, it scans archives; however, it doesn't provide much comfort when dozens of DMG's and other installers start showing up. Most especially those built by Google. And these drives and installers showed up daily. It had me completely worried that someone had accessed my machine remotely and was copying files to send out at some interval. A couple of the DMG's were ones I'd downloaded on purpose (GPG, accounting applications, games I wanted to try, etc.). These DMG's showing up on my desktop or the Finder sidebar only made my worries increase. After much debate, I deleted everything Google from my machine as well as the other installation DMG's, etc. Every time a device showed up through the Finder OR through Disk Utility, I did a search for where this item existed via "Show in Finder" and deleted the device after un-mounting or ejecting it... to no avail. There were even ghost images that showed up of things I'd deleted. I found strange archives, temp drives, etc. that showed up regularly. I decided to turn off my WiFi connection from the MacBook whenever I wasn't using the machine: didn't change any of the behavior. I checked all my links to my Comcast network: the modem, my TimeCapsule router, my MacBook Pro, any and all external hard-drives, thumb drives, and even my TimeCapsule backups. It Took Forever. Was it worth it? Well: no. The problem continued to frustrate me. I changed passwords everywhere because I didn't want to take any chances. I utilized TOR Browser, the duckduckgo search engine (specifically their onion site), and went to password generator sites (Dashlane) create baffling passwords up to 33 characters in length for most every on-line account, my computer, my router, my modem... everything. The problem never abated. I'm not a newbie to UNIX so I did a LOT of investigating through both the command line & through various applications to figure things out. I looked up system calls, error messages, I've just about become a master. I finally opened a ticket. Suffice it to say: they weren't very receptive. Only after I threatened to review them openly and demand satisfaction for the money I spent on their application suite did they finally take a look at all my amassed data. They even had me download one of their in-house applications to record issues. After two months (I had to demand updates), I was told this was a bug and it would be corrected with the next revision released for Catalina. I was told that this would continue until I upgraded. Not Good Enough. In the meantime, they told me I could fully reinstall Mojave, my apps, etc. to see if the problems ceased. Not Good Enough. The other option was to disable scanning archives. NOT a good idea whatsoever. I like the product. I like the interface, building specialized scans is easy (even though they say you don't have to), and the options are very helpful. It scans all the time, monitors my browsers, checks any downloaded applications, DGM's, archives, you name it. My computer doesn't slow down as much as it did under Symantec's lethargic scans. I like the NetBarrier application as well. Much better than anything I'd used in the past. Both applications and methodologies are superior outside of what I've experienced via customer service, etc. I don't like frustrating support techs that dismiss my dilemma. I don't appreciate being "on-hold" for a long duration begging for updates. I don't appreciate having to demand satisfaction from a company that's been in business for practically as long as I've operated computers. What am I doing now? I'm working on a plan to change out my network equipment (not cheap), set up a NAS, rebuild my laptop, iPhone, and iPad, install GPG, etc. I plan on installing the Intego products immediately and scanning everything (again) to ensure something hasn't compromised the existing installation sending false positives. Am I overreacting? Yes. What would you do in light of ID Theft, burglary, fraud, compromised banks, strange transactions, and strange computer behavior?

so...I have just get here few weeks ago and now getting back to leave a comment because I got Intego only after I read this review. It really convinced me that my macbook needs protection. Wasn't wrong though... ran some scans and was totally shocked to find out that my device is infected... :(

I still believe that Intego is one of the best antiviruses out there for my iMac. I mean come on... they even designed it to fit the interface of iOS! I got it about 3 months ago.... straight away it caught 4 warms and a spy cookie!!! can you imagine?

I got 12 months of McAfee Live Safe included with a Dell notebook. I think it works fine, McAfee tries to upsell you with other products all the time in the app. You don't have to take the bait and they are not annoying. It scans fine, and I like that finally the suite isn't a resource hog like in the past. I could install it on my Mac as well, but Catalina really locks down the OS these days and MacAfee would install but you have to manually address the permission blocks the OS does so its sort of messy and nowhere near as easy to install on Catalina as it is on Windows 10. I decided to pass on the Mac install, but can recommend the PC version.

I had a major problem re McAfee. A computer I bought came with a year subscription to Norton, but had McAfee pre-installed on it. So I tried uninstalling the McAfee. It appeared to be gone but when I tried to install Morton it detected McAfee on my machine and I had a really difficult time getting rid of the McAfee trace. I had to go online to get a special download, it was not easy. A warning to people, McAfee is very hard to totally uninstall. I don't like companies that do that.

Worst antivirus ever. It loads your PC heavily and creates 30+ processes in memory. It follows to frequent lags, which are very annoying. As a programmer I couldn't install Golang with its tools and Rust. This stupid piece of shit developed by stupid people doesn't allow installer to rename directories (sure because it desperately tries to find some virus in them and locks them) At the same time this bloody bastard reacts on very simple "hello world " programs written in pure assembly language and shows huge alarm popups. - Hey I found a treat! Never use that shit.