McAfee is a software security company that provides various products to protect your devices from malware. They do this on a yearly subscription basis, and despite their antivirus protection, identity monitoring, and web protection, their customers are getting scammed. If you are an active McAfee user, you need to beware of any email that might sound suspicious.

In this article, we will expand on the McAfee email scam and how you can protect yourself. If you are a victim of this scam, you should contact the relevant government agencies of your country.

Also read: How to stop McAfee pop-ups?

What happens in the scam?

This McAfee scam is a form of phishing which includes links containing malware. Phishing is a form of cybercrime that fishes for sensitive information like passwords, login credentials, or credit card information. This form of cybercrime can occur via emails, SMS, or any other digital form of written message. They usually have poor grammar, and since scammers try their best to make it look original, you may have to look twice at any message. A phishing email or text will be from a company that you are a client of or a government organisation.

Many clients of McAfee have been receiving emails from McAfee, or so they think. This email informs them that their account is about to be or has been charged a certain amount of money to renew their subscription for McAfee Total Protection anti-virus software. They should click on the link to cancel their subscription or this money transfer. When someone clicks on this link, malware gets downloaded to your device. Some emails also provide a number for further assistance; on calling this number, a person disguised as a McAfee employee asks for your bank account details and other sensitive information.

How to spot a phishing attempt?

If you are or have not been a victim of this scam yet, read below to find the signs and clues on how you can avoid getting phished and protect your information:

• The first clue can be cross-checking the email ID when you receive a similar email. Your device is safe if you are not clicking on any links. The email might look like it is from the agency, which in this case is McAfee; however, there might be some odd letters or numbers. If the email has a lot of numbers that are replacing letters, avoid taking further action.
• The message in the email will always indicate a problem with your McAfee account like suspicious activity, log-in attempts, free coupons, free government refunds, showing a fake invoice, or confirming personal or financial information. It can also ask you for a payment update, a billing issue
• The company’s logo might be blurry.
• The initial greeting can be very casual or generic.
• Real companies send emails asking you to update your account or inform you if there is some issue with your account; however, they do not send any links to click.
• The phishing email address might have a common one, like Gmail or Hotmail.
• There is always a sense of urgency attached to phishing emails or texts.

Also read: How to check for Frontier outage? 

McAfee’s aid

McAfee cannot aggressively defend you by amping up their safety features, as phishing emails are good at pretending to look like ordinary emails. Hence, McAfee has listed email IDs they use to send emails.

McAfee says that all of their emails end with .mcafee.com.

if you have received any mail from them, you can cross-reference this email with the ones provided by McAfee. You can review them in detail. Some of them are:

• no-reply@mcafeemobilesecurity.com
• mcafee@mail.email-ssl.com
• info@communication.mcafee.com
• info@protect.mcafee.com
• info@smmktg.mcafee.com
• info@authentication.mcafee.com
• consumersupport@mcafee.com
• info@protect.mcafee.com.cname.campaign.adobe.com

If you are noticing a trend where you keep receiving fraudulent emails, run a virus scan, back up your data, and change all of your passwords. You can also directly contact McAfee to confirm if they have sent you an email concerning the reason cited in the email. McAfee prefers that you go directly to the website and log in there instead of clicking on any link. You can learn how to block or unsubscribe any emails that you find suspicious on Gmail.

Also read: McAfee error code 1: 9 Fixes