. Pros Excellent scores from two independent testing labs. Full parental control system. Network protection. Decent score in our antiphishing test.

Privacy protection. Useful bonus tools. Cons Parental content filter foiled by secure anonymizing proxy. Content filter missed raunchy sites blocked by Windows edition. Bottom Line Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac excels in independent lab tests, and it goes far beyond mere antivirus, offering protection against network attacks, parental control, privacy protection, and many other useful features. Editors' Note: We are aware of the allegations of Kaspersky Lab's inappropriate ties to the Russian government. Until we see some actual proof of these allegations, we will, and continue to recommend Kaspersky's security products as long as their performance continues to merit our endorsement.

Vary widely in the features they provide, just like their cousins running on Windows. Actual protection against malware is always present, of course, and some stop there. In addition to an effective antivirus component, however, Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac gives you secure browsing with the Safe Money tool, privacy protection components, a modicum of VPN protection, and even parental control.

For the same price as many simple Mac antivirus utilities, Kaspersky gives you a full suite. A big image of a MacBook dominates the product's main window. If the pictured monitor is green, with a checkmark, everything is fine.

As in the Windows product, a red screen indicates that something's wrong, and it also shows an explanation and a button to you can click to fix the problem. Four icons occupy a strip across the bottom: Scan, Update, Privacy, and Parental Control. (The Safe Money browser security add-on used to have its own button, but you now control it directly from the browser extension, which makes sense.) Despite having more features than many competitors do, this product maintains an uncluttered main window. Pricing and OS Support A single license for this product costs $39.99 per year, while extending protection to three Macs raises that to $59.99. Kaspersky's Windows antivirus product also costs $59.99 per year for three licenses.

Bitdefender and ESET precisely match that price plan, while Webroot charges just $49.99 for three licenses. You can also get away with paying nothing at all— and Avira don't cost a thing. As for Trend Micro, it, too, costs $39.99 per year for a single license. However, the price for the three-license plan, which lets you install a full security suite on PCs or antivirus on Macs, jumps to $79.95 per year. You pay more for Intego, which lists at $99.99 per year for three licenses, but you get more security features, too.

At $89.99 per year for five licenses, also looks pricey, but on a per-device basis it's not that different from Kaspersky, and it also offers a full suite of features. As you can see, there is quite a range of pricing for Mac antivirus software. Some Mac antivirus products, among them and Norton, only support the very latest few iterations of the Mac operating system. Others extend support back to much older versions. ESET, for example, runs on anything from Snow Leopard (10.6) on.

Kaspersky swings two ways. The current 2019 edition requires Sierra (10.12) or later, but the 2018 edition remains available for those using versions back to Mavericks (10.9). Tuneboy hear download for mac. Excellent Malware Protection Test Results When writing a review of a Windows-based antivirus program, I check the reports from four independent testing labs around the world, and supplement what I learn with hands-on testing.

Kaspersky's Windows antivirus earned a perfect score in all the latest tests from the four labs. Only two of those labs perform tests on macOS antivirus, alas. Their reports are all the more important, because my hands-on test setup heavily favors Windows. Both AV-Test and certify Kaspersky for Mac malware protection. Like Intego and Bitdefender, it fended off 100 percent of the samples in tests by both labs. It also detected 100 percent of Windows-focused malware in a test by AV-Comparatives. Why does that even matter?

It's important because your Mac could conceivably serve to transmit such threats to one of your Windows machines, where it could do damage. Capable Phishing Protection Almost all viruses, Trojans, and other types of malware work on only one platform. Some may even require a specific, vulnerable version of that platform. Phishing attacks, on the other hand, are totally platform-agnostic. If your Linux-powered internet-aware dishwasher includes a web browser, a phishing site can trick you into giving away your login credentials before rinse cycle.

Kaspersky's plug-in for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox scans your internet traffic for fraudulent or malicious pages and steers the browser to safety. To test phishing protection, I first collect several hundred possible fraudulent URLs, doing my best to get ones that haven't yet been analyzed and blacklisted. I use a hand-coded utility to launch each URL simultaneously in three browsers, relying on the protection built into. Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.

For the fourth, Norton provides the phishing protection. My utility is Windows-specific, so, for Mac product testing, I simply copy/paste the URLs into the browser and note the results manually.

Kaspersky Internet Security For Mac Price

If any browser displays an error message, I discard that URL. If it isn't very clearly a fraud, with fields to capture your username and password, I also discard it. When the test is finished, I compare the detection rate of the product under test with that of the three browsers. After an initial rocky start, for Windows aced this test, with 100 percent protection.

Naturally it beat out all three browsers. Results weren't so rosy when I tested the same URL collection on the macOS product. I found it missed a dozen or so verified phishing URLs that succumbed to the power of the Windows edition.

Both products surely use the same database of known frauds, so I deduce the difference must be in the local heuristic detection of brand-new ones. My Kaspersky contact checked with the developers and confirmed that there is a problem 'due to one of the protection components not being updated in this version.'

That problem should be fixed shortly. Other product lines have exhibited a similar variation in the phishing test. For example, for windows managed 99 percent detection, while it's Mac edition only managed 88 percent. And Norton's Mac antivirus has a lower score than its Windows counterpart, too.

Scans and Schedules In addition to the expected quick and full scans for malware, Kaspersky offers a custom scan that lets you choose drives or folders for scanning, scan for active malware in memory, or just scan items that launch at startup. A quick test scan finished in less than a minute, while a full scan took 33 minutes. Norton scanned even faster, finishing a full scan in 10 minutes and a quick scan in 30 seconds. However, is the speed demon of the bunch. Its full scan finished in just two minutes, and it completed a quick scan in 15 seconds. These and other speedy scans have pulled the average full scan time down to 23 minutes, but Kaspersky is still plenty fast.

I'm not equipped to release actual macOS malware on the test system, but I did drop a folder of samples containing malware from my Windows antivirus testing onto its drag-and-drop scan screen. Overall, it wiped out 76 percent of the samples, better than average and quite a bit better than when I last tested this product. Detected just a quarter of the samples, and Intego even fewer, while Sophos wiped out every single one of them. Includes an elaborate scheduling system that even lets you schedule the launch of third-party applications. Bitdefender and Webroot, among others, let you create a daily or weekly scan schedule. Kaspersky, on the other hand, doesn't include a scheduling component, instead relying on real-time protection to eliminate any attempted malware attacks. It does now run a full scan after installation, to take care of any preexisting problems.

Safe Money for Safe Browsing Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky Total Security both include a feature called Safe Money. When you're about to visit a financial website or other sensitive site, it offers to open the site in a special browser that's hardened against outside interference. In the Windows version, a glowing green border serves as a visual reminder that you're using the safe browser. The Mac antivirus also has a feature called Safe Money, but it's a completely different thing. When you visit what appears to be a sensitive website, Kaspersky double-checks it with the Kaspersky Security Network online, and notifies you if the site is not legitimate. In previous versions, it slid out a notification stating that the site is OK, but I found that it frequently offered multiple notifications. The current version is completely silent unless it detects a problem.

I assume it's working, but I couldn't prove it. Full-Scale Parental Control Both Sophos and offer a degree of parental control in their Mac products. Specifically, they let the administrator block access to websites matching categories deemed inappropriate. With Kaspersky, on the other hand, you get a full-scale parental control utility, with content filtering, time control, and private data protection. Previously, Kaspersky Internet Security's parental control included control over social media contacts, both on Windows and macOS.

That feature is no longer present, but you can get it in, which comes with the top-tier suite Kaspersky Total Security. Web Control lets you ban access to nine content categories, among them Adult Content, Profanity, and Violence.

Kaspersky Internet Security For Mac 2019

By default, it forces Safe Search on major search portals. You can also use it to restrict downloading of apps, music, and videos. When Kaspersky blocks access to a site, it shows the category or categories that triggered the block. In testing, though, I found that it let through numerous raunchy websites that its Windows equivalent blocked. And logging in to a secure anonymizing proxy completely defeated the content filter, where the Windows edition prevented such chicanery.

Time Control lets parents control the time each child spends online. You can set a daily maximum, and also define just when internet access is permitted. There's no fancy grid to set the schedule like what you get in the Windows edition.

Rather, you just define a single time-span for internet access on weekdays, and another for access on weekends. Kids like to chat with their friends online, but sometimes they can share more private data than parents would prefer. If that's a concern, you can turn on Personal Data Control and add any data you feel they shouldn't share, such as your home address and phone number. This is a fairly common feature, but some implementations fail when data is shared over a secure (HTTPS) connection. I verified that Kaspersky's control of private data works just fine on HTTPS. I did find the process of adding private data items to be awkward.

The list consists of alternating white and grey lines. Clicking the icon to add an item simply turns the next available line a darker grey. You have to click on the new line to add your data. It's much more straightforward in the Windows edition. As you can see, Kaspersky offers more features than competing Mac products. If this is something you need, Kaspersky can be a good choice. Be warned, though, that its content filter is more porous than the Windows equivalent.

Privacy Protection Do you ever worry that someone might be spying on you through your MacBook's webcam? Kaspersky's Privacy Protection features include a simple webcam block. Under Windows, you can set Kaspersky to allow specific programs while blocking unknowns, and you can also block spying through the microphone. The macOS version is just an on/off switch for the webcam, so you must unblock the camera for tasks like video conferencing.

To confirm that this feature works, I blocked the webcam and then launched FaceTime. FaceTime reported 'no camera available,' and a slide-in notification reported that Kaspersky blocked access. You can also turn on website tracker blocking, to prevent advertisers and other trackers from following you around the web. This feature lets you choose whether to block four types of trackers: ad agencies, social networks, web analytics, and web behavior trackers. Note that blocking social networks doesn't prevent you from clicking links to like or share a page. Bandwidth-Limited VPN All programs in the current Kaspersky product line come with a bandwidth-capped copy of. You can use 200MB of secured connectivity on each device, and the VPN chooses the server you'll use.

For $4.99 per month you can upgrade to the premium edition, which removes the bandwidth cap and lets you choose the country you want to use for your connection. Please read our review of the VPN for full details. Bitdefender's product line now offers a very similar VPN arrangement, with 200MB and no server choice for free, or unlimited bandwidth and choice of servers for a premium. It's no surprise that the two are similar, since both are backed by the server network of. We have dinged Hotspot Shield in past reviews for some iffy privacy policies; this problem seems to be resolved. In any case, both Bitdefender and Kaspersky put severe limits on the user info they share with AnchorFree. Bonus Tools This suite costs no more than several of the Mac antivirus utilities I've reviewed, but it offers quite a lot more.

While not precisely a full-scale firewall like that found in and Norton, its Network Attack Blocker watches for port scans and other attacks from the internet. When Kaspersky detects an attack, it imposes a temporary block on all traffic from the offending site. In addition to fending off fraudulent and malicious websites, Kaspersky's URL Advisor marks up dangerous links in search results. Under Windows, this feature puts a green icon next to safe links as well. On the Mac, the latest update removes the green safe icon and the grey unknown icon, marking only dangerous links.

Norton's similar feature lets you bring up a full analysis of the page, showing exactly why it's marked as dangerous. You can also install an onscreen keyboard in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, to eliminate the possibility of password capture by a software or hardware keylogger. The keyboard appears automatically when you're about to log in to a secure website.

Among the product's many recommendations is a suggestion to install. Note, though, that this is the free, feature-limited edition, something anyone can download and use.

A Wealth of Features Kaspersky doesn't offer a stand-alone Mac antivirus, so Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac is this company's entry-level security product for macOS. In addition to high-scoring malware protection, you get a full parental control system, effective protection against fraudulent and malicious URLs, privacy protection features, a firewall-like Network Attack Blocker, a bandwidth-limited, and more. It's an impressive array of features. Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac scores a hair better than Kaspersky in the lab tests, and its scans run faster.

If what you want is just antivirus, Bitdefender is an excellent choice, but if you're looking for more comprehensive security, Kaspersky can be even better. Both are Editors' Choice programs for Mac antivirus.