At a Glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Solid safety with an affordable subscription value
• Browsing safety, banking safety, ID monitoring, password safety, and parental controls add to the core AV
• Dashboard is effectively designed and simple to make use of

Cons

• Failed to wash malicious information in a ZIP archive

Our Verdict

F-Secure Safe is a complete and cost-effective safety product providing safety towards downloaded malware, dangerous web sites, banking credential compromises, and identification theft.

Price When Reviewed

$34.99 for 3 units for one yr; $44.99 for 5 units for one yr; $54.99 for seven units for one yr

Best Prices Today: F-Secure Safe

With malware and different threats coming from quite a lot of sources, you want a safety product that may defend you regardless of the place you might be and what you’re doing. F-Secure Safe is one program with that purpose in thoughts.

Starting off with primary antivirus safety, the software program goals to keep at bay trojans, ransomware, and adware. From there, the looking 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 youngsters from inappropriate content material and enable you to handle their display screen time. Also included within the combine is identification safety, which screens your e-mail addresses and bank cards for breaches and affords an non-compulsory password supervisor.

Note: This assessment 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 obtainable for quite a lot of platforms, together with Windows 7 SP1 (help 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 fees you an annual subscription charge primarily based on the variety of PCs or units you wish to defend—$34.99 for 3 units for one yr; $44.99 for 5 units for one yr; $54.99 for seven units for one yr. A handy 30-day free trial enables you to take the total program for a spin; no bank card or cost data required.

F-Secure Safe: Installation

Installation is fast and simple. 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 just’re now protected and are capable of view and use the core options.

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F-Secure Safe: Features

The dashboard is effectively designed, providing you entry to the completely different choices by class. Under People & Devices, you may see which individuals and units are at the moment subscribed to F-Secure Safe and add extra units or customers to the combo.

Under Viruses & Threats, you may run a handbook virus scan. Here, you’re ready to decide on between a fast scan to examine particular Windows system information and a full laptop scan to examine your total system. The scan retains you knowledgeable as as to whether it finds something dangerous. Afterwards, the safety historical past for every scan enables you to assessment when it ran, what number of information it checked, and whether or not it uncovered any malware.

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Next, you may quickly flip off all safety and examine for updates. You may also submit a virus pattern by the F-Secure web site, examine your Windows Firewall, and look at any quarantined or blocked malware. Plus, the dashboard offers the required entry to ID safety and monitoring to forestall identification theft. 

The F-Secure Safe settings provide entry to quite a lot of choices divided into completely different classes. Here, you may assessment and disable the virus safety, antimalware scanning, and internet visitors scanning. You can management the handbook scan in addition to schedule a scan for a selected date, time, and frequency. Further, you’re capable of handle the looking and banking safety options. The Settings display screen packs numerous choices into one place, nevertheless it’s all effectively organized and simple to make use of.

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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 looking 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, no less than for probably the most half. With the looking safety enabled, the software program warned me of doubtless dangerous websites whereas giving me an possibility to permit the location and report it as a false constructive if I knew it was reliable.

A handbook scan discovered the three malicious check information on my PC and requested me whether or not I wished the software program to deal with them. However, once I gave this system the OK to proceed, it advised me that it was unable to wash two of the information as a result of they have been contained in a ZIP archive. On the plus facet, attempting to manually run the identical executable information throughout the ZIP did immediate F-Secure Safe to catch and quarantine them.

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Downloading the completely different check information 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 defense and value and strong grades for efficiency. A review from AV Comparatives in 2020 awarded this system excessive marks for defense however gave it dings for too many false positives.

Adding an previous e-mail handle to the ID monitoring displayed a report itemizing previous breaches by which my handle was uncovered. I appreciated the extent of element within the report because it included the title and date of the breach, my username, my password (if accessible), the information that was compromised, and proposals.

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 capable of flag any weak passwords.

The parental controls have 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 the screens to pick parental guidelines, so I may decide to restrict use to sure days and instances and filter particular forms of content material.

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Should you purchase F-Secure Safe?

F-Secure Safe offers strong malware safety and extras like ID safety, password administration, and parental controls. For the value, you get numerous bang to your buck. And regardless of all of the options crammed into one package deal, the software program is comparatively straightforward to make use of and handle.