How to Remove McAfee Popups

McAfee popups are the push notifications you may receive in the Windows notification tray. Its contents hint that your antivirus subscription expires, or that your system is infected with numerous viruses. It is a scam that aims at intimidating people and forcing them to make unnecessary purchases. In this article, you will see a detailed explanation of these pop-ups and a guide on stopping them.

What are McAfee Popups? Is It Scam?

In their essence, McAfee popups are notifications from malicious websites that aim at making a profit by showing ads. They abuse legitimate browser functionality of push notifications and stem from the permission to send them to the malignant site. You can encounter dozens of different variations of that scam, but this specific one aims specifically at the antivirus theme.

Upon clicking the pop-up, the user is thrown to a page filled with clickbait claims. 99% of the time, it is about you being infected with malware, or your subscription being expired. All this clickbait is here to make you follow the instructions and download the antivirus. In fact, despite being disguised with a legitimate brand name, the page may return the installer of a completely different program.

McAfee subscription has expired

Fake Virus Alert From Mcafee

It is also worth noting some McAfee popups promoting downloading and payment pages of real McAfee, i.e. they lead to a genuine site in a particularly scammy way. In this case, the chance of getting malicious or unwanted software is much lower. The reason for this to happen is a dishonest advertising affiliate using a shady scheme to get paid by the vendor. Still, the same popups may further direct the user to the unwanted software – this promotion way is illegal after all.

Exclusions

There are rare cases where such push notifications have a legitimate origin, specifically – a browser plugin from McAfee themselves. It can send notifications about expiring subscriptions, discounts, and things like that. But this is, again, a rare situation, and in the majority of pop-ups come from malicious copies.

How to Stop McAfee Popups on Chrome?

There are several options to stop popups from McAfee, most of which are about tinkering with browser settings. It is not complicated but requires one to know what exactly they should change. I’ve collected the complete guide below; from removing excessive permissions to deleting extensions and checking the system for malware activity.

Disable notification permissions

As I’ve said, the reason for these popups to appear is the permission to send notifications for the questionable website. Removing them requires some digging in browser settings, but is not too complicated. This is the most straightforward action you can take to stop McAfee pop-ups.

1. Click the three vertical dots, then “Settings“. Go to “Privacy and security” ⇢ Site Settings. Alternatively, you can use the search bar to find this menu.
   
2. Select the “Notifications” option. Here, scroll down to the list of sites that can send notifications. This is where the source of the problem resides.
   
3. Delete all the sites from that list. If there are some that you recognize and are willing to keep receiving notifications from, feel free to keep them enabled.

Remove the McAfee Chrome extension

If you have the McAfee extension in your browser, and suspect it is exactly the reason for the notifications to appear, your way to fix the issue is to delete or stop this extension. Same as in the previous part, it only requires running through a bunch of browser settings.

1. Launch the Chrome app. Click the three dots in the top right corner.



2. Then select More Tools ⇢ Extensions. Here, turn off the McAfee Extensions button.
   
   

   
3. Restart the Chrome app and make sure it’s not running. Or, click the “Remove” button on the McAfee extension to remove it from Chrome.

Can McAfee Products Cause Pop-Ups?

As McAfee is a recognized and reputable software company, enforcing pop-up notifications through the software is not a suitable tactic for them. Even though there is a browser extension that sends pop-ups, it is much less obtrusive and more about “safe” marketing. Software itself, like antiviruses or VPN apps, are not capable of sending pop-ups at all.

Moreover, quite a few people among those complaining about McAfee popups do not have any piece of their software. These scam pop-ups target unselectively, and the worst part is that there may be a malicious program that causes all this mess.

How to Stop Fake notification from McAfee?

As I’ve just said, it is possible for malware to force the appearance of the McAfee popups and the consequent Subscription Expired page. In particular, adware and browser hijackers are two malware types that do this nasty trick particularly often. They bring profit to their masters by throwing users of infected systems to unwanted websites, with the fake McAfee sites being just one of the examples. And to get rid of the malware, the anti-malware software scan is needed.