Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Solid safety with an inexpensive subscription worth
- Browsing safety, banking safety, ID monitoring, password safety, and parental controls add to the core AV
- Dashboard is properly designed and straightforward to make use of
Cons
- Failed to wash malicious recordsdata in a ZIP archive
Our Verdict
F-Secure Safe is a complete and cost-effective safety product providing safety in opposition to downloaded malware, dangerous web sites, banking credential compromises, and identification theft.
Price When Reviewed
$34.99 for 3 gadgets for one 12 months; $44.99 for 5 gadgets for one 12 months; $54.99 for seven gadgets for one 12 months
Best Prices Today: F-Secure Safe
With malware and different threats coming from a wide range of sources, you want a safety product that may defend you irrespective of the place you might be and what you’re doing. F-Secure Safe is one program with that objective in thoughts.
Starting off with fundamental antivirus safety, the software program goals to thrust back trojans, ransomware, and spy ware. From there, the shopping safety constructed into the core program and its browser extension steers you away from malicious web sites. The banking safety routinely makes an attempt to safe your on-line banking transactions. And the parental controls attempt to defend your children from inappropriate content material and assist you to handle their display time. Also included within the combine is identification safety, which screens your electronic mail addresses and bank cards for breaches and gives an non-obligatory password supervisor.
Note: This evaluate is a part of our best antivirus roundup. Go there for particulars about competing merchandise and the way we examined them.
F-Secure Safe is on the market for a wide range of platforms, together with Windows 7 SP1 (assist ends in August 2023), Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, macOS 10.15 Catalina or later, iOS 14 or later, and Android 8.0 or later.
Like most paid safety merchandise, F-Secure Safe prices you an annual subscription charge based mostly on the variety of PCs or gadgets you wish to defend—$34.99 for 3 gadgets for one 12 months; $44.99 for 5 gadgets for one 12 months; $54.99 for seven gadgets for one 12 months. A handy 30-day free trial permits you to take the total program for a spin; no bank card or cost data required.
F-Secure Safe: Installation
Installation is fast and straightforward. To obtain this system, you’re prompted to create an account. You can select to put in this system in your present PC or one other machine. After set up, your subscription or free trial kicks off, and also you’re deposited on the dashboard the place you obtain affirmation that you simply’re now protected and are in a position to view and use the core options.
The F-Secure Safe
dashboard confirms that the mandatory protections are in place and allows you to view and run all the important thing options.
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F-Secure Safe: Features
The dashboard is properly designed, providing you entry to the totally different choices by class. Under People & Devices, you possibly can see which individuals and gadgets are at present subscribed to F-Secure Safe and add extra gadgets or customers to the combination.
Under Viruses & Threats, you possibly can run a guide virus scan. Here, you’re ready to decide on between a fast scan to test particular Windows system recordsdata and a full pc scan to test your complete system. The scan retains you knowledgeable as as to whether it finds something dangerous. Afterwards, the safety historical past for every scan permits you to evaluate when it ran, what number of recordsdata it checked, and whether or not it uncovered any malware.
F-Secure Safe retains you abreast of the progress as you run a guide scan and offers entry to your safety historical past.
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Next, you possibly can quickly flip off all safety and test for updates. You also can submit a virus pattern by way of the F-Secure web site, test your Windows Firewall, and consider any quarantined or blocked malware. Plus, the dashboard offers the mandatory entry to ID safety and monitoring to stop identification theft.
The F-Secure Safe settings provide entry to a wide range of choices divided into totally different classes. Here, you possibly can evaluate and disable the virus safety, antimalware scanning, and internet visitors scanning. You can management the guide scan in addition to schedule a scan for a specific date, time, and frequency. Further, you’re in a position to handle the shopping and banking safety options. The Settings display packs a number of choices into one place, but it surely’s all properly organized and straightforward to make use of.
The settings display for F-Secure Safe permits you to simply entry and management all the choices.
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The dashboard well prompts you so as to add the F-Secure Safe extension to Microsoft Edge in addition to Google Chrome and Firefox. The extension enhances the general shopping safety and tries to defend your on-line banking transactions from compromise.
F-Secure Safe: Performance
In real-world testing, F-Secure Safe proved itself efficient and succesful, at the least for essentially the most half. With the shopping safety enabled, the software program warned me of probably dangerous websites whereas giving me an possibility to permit the positioning and report it as a false constructive if I knew it was legit.
A guide scan discovered the three malicious take a look at recordsdata on my PC and requested me whether or not I needed the software program to deal with them. However, after I gave this system the OK to proceed, it informed me that it was unable to wash two of the recordsdata as a result of they had been contained in a ZIP archive. On the plus aspect, making an attempt to manually run the identical executable recordsdata throughout the ZIP did immediate F-Secure Safe to catch and quarantine them.
A guide scan caught malicious recordsdata on my PC however was unable to wash the recordsdata saved inside ZIP archives.
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Downloading the totally different take a look at recordsdata from the EICAR testing site prompted the software program to flag them as dangerous and routinely quarantine them. An AV-Test review from July/August 2022 gave F-Secure Safe high marks for cover and value and stable grades for efficiency. A review from AV Comparatives in 2020 awarded this system excessive marks for cover however gave it dings for too many false positives.
Adding an outdated electronic mail tackle to the ID monitoring displayed a report itemizing previous breaches by which my tackle was uncovered. I preferred the extent of element within the report because it included the title and date of the breach, my username, my password (if obtainable), the info that was compromised, and suggestions.
The password vault was tougher and time-consuming to arrange in contrast with most devoted password managers. But following the setup, the related browser extension would routinely log me into web sites, whereas the vault was in a position to flag any weak passwords.
The parental controls had been straightforward to implement. I may ship a hyperlink to put in the software program for a kid’s account. Setting up the software program took me by way of the screens to pick parental guidelines, so I may choose to restrict use to sure days and instances and filter particular varieties of content material.
Installing this system below a baby’s account supplied me screens to arrange the mandatory parental guidelines and controls.
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Should you purchase F-Secure Safe?
F-Secure Safe offers stable malware safety and extras like ID safety, password administration, and parental controls. For the worth, you get a number of bang on your buck. And regardless of all of the options crammed into one bundle, the software program is comparatively straightforward to make use of and handle.