McAfee Total Protection is an antivirus application that uses tracking of user interactions.
The McAfee installer references a privacy policy while user behaviour tracking has already started to submit installer usage. It at least points at user behaviour tracking:
"We automatically collect information about your interactions with the Services as well as devices on which the Services are installed. In some cases, we automatically collect information about other devices connected to the same network as the device on which the Services are installed."
While the McAfee user interface boasts with headlines like My Privacy, there is no setting related to telemetry at all.
Is it spyware?
We use the ASCs definition of Tracking Software and Spyware:
- Tracking software
- Software that monitors user behavior, or gathers information about the user, sometimes including personally identifiable or other sensitive information, through an executable program.”
- Spyware
- In its narrow sense, Spyware is a term for Tracking Software deployed without adequate notice, consent, or control for the user.”
Since the term adequate is not well defined in the ASCs context, we use both the European GDPR and compare Information, Consent and Control to what is standard for Windows itself.
- Information
- Partial: The Privacy Policy includes a bold sentence mentioning user behaviour tracking.
- Consent
- Bad: the installer starts tracking even before the user reads the Privacy Policy.
- Control
- Bad: no control over telemetry at all.