Total Defense Internet Security 

Total Defense Internet Security Suite covers nearly all those aspects related to the security of your PC worth worrying about. Thus, it offers full cloud-based protection against viruses and malware tools, download protection for the most popular Internet browsers, virus protection for tablets and mobile phones, protection from suspicious links of social networks sites, parental control, and more.

The program’s interface is attractive and easy to navigate. Divided into four main sections – My Files, My Computer, My Internet, and My Kids – each of these comes with a wide range of tools and settings. A “My Settings” tab will also take you to a special window where you can configure all the program’s alerts, as well as how your proxy will work and all the update options and history.

“My Internet” will take care of everything related to your Internet security, including network access and rules, browser protection, identity protection, and protection against Web threats. Regarding “My Computer”, you can set here various settings regarding the scan processes and the use of CA’s Cloud Defense Technology for Advanced Protection (the name alone makes you feel safer already!). Finally, “My Kids” will give you various tools to configure when and how your children will be able to browse through the Web, as well as the e-mail alerts you may want to receive whenever certain rules have not been observed.

Were it not for the half-morning I spent trying to re-gain control over my computer, I would rate this comprehensive application much higher. After an hour’s wait seeing how my PC was hopelessly struggling to reboot – following the program’s instructions – I resolved to switch it off and on again only to find out that it simply would not start. To cut a long story short, it required a third-party uninstaller (after forcing my PC to start Windows in safe mode) to get rid of (nearly) all the traces left by this tool in my hard drive and Windows registry. Not the best marketing strategy if I may say so.