Surfshark: 80% discount and get free antivirus software!

Surfshark: 80% discount and get free antivirus software!

Surfshark

Web browsing has now become an integral part of everyday life for each of us, which is why IT security plays a fundamental role in being able to defend against external attacks. Surfshark operates in this particular field which, through its new and interesting promotion, allows you to subscribe to a two-year subscription plan with an 80% discount, with the possibility of also obtaining a free antivirus software.

Read also: The best VPNs of 2022 Surfshark VPN is an operator that guarantees online privacy and security, through a very powerful software that improves your identity and your searches, in order to obtain completely confidential search results. Clearly, everything happens through the coding of all the activities carried out on the network, so that no one can monitor or steal the data.

Surfshark VPN also includes a large number of secondary services (all included in the subscription plan on offer), which improve navigation, as in the case of Ad-blocker to limit the proliferation of advertisements, or data protection, especially when connecting to a public network.

The plans offered by Surfshark I am:

monthly subscription, from € 11.59 per month annual subscription, from € 3.59 per month instead of € 11.59, thanks to a 69% discount two-year subscription, from € 2.29 per month instead € 11.59, thanks to an 80% discount. In short, we are talking about a promotion aimed above all at those who want to improve the security of their devices and, in particular, of their personal data, which can end up in the wrong hands. Finally, before leaving you to make your purchase, we refer you to our four Telegram channels dedicated to offers, the ideal place to receive the best offers in progress on the various stores, with specific channels dedicated to: Offers, Hardware & Tech, Clothing and Sports and products Chinese. Happy shopping!

»See the offer from Surfshark VPN! «

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Surfshark One Review

At the core of an old-school security suite you usually find antivirus protection plus a two-way firewall, but that may be changing. More and more we’re seeing suites built around antivirus and identity protection, or antivirus and VPN. Surfshark One belongs to the latter category. Its VPN component is an Editors’ Choice as a standalone, but the new antivirus needs some work.


You may find ads or links for Surfshark Antivirus, billed as antivirus protection with a bonus VPN component, while Surfshark One presents as a VPN with free antivirus. My contacts at the company confirm that these are the same product, just with a different promotional emphasis.

How Much Does Surfshark One Cost?

The vast majority of antivirus and security suite products come as yearly subscriptions. VPNs, on the other hand, typically charge by the month, with a discount if you pay for a year up front. Surfshark One costs $14.44 per month—a bit more than the $12.95 per month you pay for Surfshark VPN by itself. If you go for the annual payment, the VPN alone costs $59.76, discounted to $47.88 the first year. For the full Surfshark One, you pay $96 per year, discounted to $65.76 the first year. Note that, at this writing, a summer promotion has reduced some of these prices.


Surfshark’s subscription lets you install antivirus protection on five Windows, macOS, or Android devices, plus unlimited VPN installations. Bitdefender Internet Security, for comparison, costs $84.99 for five licenses and $99.99 for 10. Its VPN component requires an extra payment to lift bandwidth limitations, but this suite also packs in vastly more security components than Surfshark.


Similar Products

Bitdefender Internet SecurityBitdefender Total SecurityNorton 360 With LifeLock SelectTrend Micro Maximum SecurityTotal Defense Ultimate Internet SecurityWebroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete

Norton 360 Deluxe costs a bit more, $104.99 per year, but that gets you five security suite licenses, five no-limits VPN licenses, and 50GB of storage for your online backups. If you want more Norton licenses, you must pay for one of the suites that combines Norton security with Lifelock identity protection. Surfshark doesn’t offer packages with more than five licenses for components other than the VPN.

Getting Started With Surfshark One

Your online Surfshark account is an important resource. Among other things, it’s the place you download your protection. Surfshark VPN runs on an unusually wide selection of platforms including Android, ChromeOS, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. However, Surfshark One's antivirus is specific to Windows, macOS, and Android.

Installation is quick and simple. The main window is mostly white, with a left rail menu that lets you select VPN, Alert, Antivirus, Search, and Settings. Note that the antivirus isn’t installed until you select it, so be sure to do that right away.

Award-Winning Surfshark VPN

The heart of this suite is Surfshark VPN, a PCMag Editors’ Choice. Please read our review for full details—I’ll provide a brief summary here.


Many VPNs only permit a set number of simultaneous connections, most commonly five. Surfshark imposes no such limitation. It also offers an unusual multi-hop feature whereby you can run your traffic through more than one VPN server, providing an additional layer of anonymity. And its split-tunneling ability means you can run private communications through the VPN while sparing other connections (such as a game played online) from the slight slowdown imposed by use of a VPN. Speaking of slowdown, Surfshark did slow downloads by a good bit more than the median in our testing, though it had a smaller effect on latency and upload speed.

Surfshark costs a bit more than average, but its unlimited connections and advanced features make the extra cost worthwhile. Other less common features include ad blocking and the ability to use a static IP address at no extra cost. That last one can be important for connecting to streaming services or other sites that try to ban VPN traffic. Surfshark Search, a privacy focused search tool, and Surfshark Alert, which warns of compromised accounts, cost $0.99 per month extra. As you’ll see, Surfshark One includes both of these without any additional charge.


As a Surfshark user you can connect to servers in 65 countries, which more than the average VPN offers. Surfshark’s coverage of South America and Africa goes beyond the usual, and it offers servers in several countries with repressive internet policies. We consider a VPN company’s privacy policies to be extremely important—Surfshark’s are appropriate and transparent. With unlimited connections, uncommon features, and an emphasis on privacy, Surfshark is an Editors’ Choice VPN. Again, please read our review for full details.

New Surfshark Antivirus

The shiny new feature that distinguishes this product from the standalone VPN is Surfshark Antivirus. Surfshark Antivirus has been available for some months now. I didn’t review it earlier because it initially lacked real-time protection, an essential feature for antivirus protection.

No Help From Independent Antivirus Labs

I closely track the reports from four independent testing labs around the world. These labs are fully staffed with antivirus experts, and they perform a wide variety of tests to evaluate just how well antivirus products do their jobs. Products like Avast, McAfee Total Protection, and Norton have appeared in results from all four labs for many years. It’s not surprising that a brand-new product like Surfshark One hasn’t yet made it into the lab reports. I'd like to see some lab testing results for future reviews of this app.


Surfshark Antivirus did receive VB100 certification from Virus Bulletin. I stopped tracking this lab some years ago, but a vote of confidence from them is still a plus. Note that many major antivirus companies have pulled out of this test. You won’t find McAfee, Norton, or Trend Micro Internet Security, but you will find plenty of relative unknowns.


Each lab has its own way of rating and reporting on antivirus success. I’ve developed an algorithm to map them all onto a 10-point scale and derive an aggregate score. Of the products tested by all four labs, Kaspersky has the best aggregate score, a near-perfect 9.9 points. Norton and Avast One are close behind, with 9.7 points. Tested by three of the four labs, AVG Internet Security matches Kaspersky’s 9.9 points, and Bitdefender comes close with 9.8.

Lackluster Malware Protection

Right after installation, Surfshark offers to run a quick antivirus scan and, unless you choose otherwise, it schedules a daily quick scan at the same time of day. As always, I declined the initial quick scan to prepare for my standard malware protection test. This test starts when I open folders containing malware samples that I have collected and analyzed myself. Surfshark dove right in, identifying many files that it recognized as malware. I was pleased that it simply displayed a counter of found threats rather than a separate pop-up for each discovery, as clicking away all those pop-ups can take a surprisingly long time.

When the numbers stopped spinning up, I clicked for details. At this point, all the detected samples were still present. I had to click a button labeled Resolve to remove them. When I did, Surfshark warned me that the files would be deleted with no chance of recovery. That’s unusual—almost every other antivirus puts found malware in quarantine, for recovery in case it wrongly labels a valid program as malware.


I later determined that Surfshark does save “deleted” files in a folder with the revealing name Quarantine, using seemingly random filenames and the file extension “infected.” It just doesn’t give the user any access to them, meaning you can’t recover a file that was deleted incorrectly. Oddly, the macOS version totally uses the quarantine concept and gives you the option to rescue wrongly quarantined files.


Surfshark eliminated 71% of the samples at this stage of my testing. That’s better than some, but ZoneAlarm wiped out 97%, while Total Defense Ultimate Internet Security and Norton managed 95%.


Each antivirus gets another chance to defend against the malware samples when I launch them. In fact, some antivirus products such as Avast, McAfee, and Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete don’t scan files until just before they launch. Continuing my Surfshark testing, I launched each sample that survived the initial massacre.


The results are disappointing. Surfshark totally missed half the remaining samples. Most of those whose chicanery it did detect still managed to plant some executable files. One was even running. With a detection rate of 86% and a score of 8.1, Surfshark has the second-lowest scores of any product tested with my current malware collection. Even looking at products tested with previous collections, only a handful scored lower.


At the other end of the spectrum, Norton detected 100% of these samples and scored 9.9 of 10 possible points. Check Point ZoneAlarm Extreme Security NextGen, McAfee, and Webroot all managed 98% detection and scored 9.8, 9.7, and 9.7 respectively.


All this time, Surfshark had been prompting me to run a quick scan. When I finally did so, the results were quite surprising. Surfshark’s scan caught many samples that the real-time protection module failed to detect on sight, even though both cases involved static detection of inert malware. That’s unusual. Most antivirus products use the same detection system for real-time protection as they do for scanning. If the real-time system had the same detection capabilities as the quick scan, Surfshark’s scores would have risen to 92% detection and 9.1 points.

Next, I set Surfshark the task of a full virus scan on a clean test system, for timing purposes. It finished in an hour and seven minutes, almost precisely the current average. Clearly this initial scan performed some optimization steps, as a repeat scan finished in just over 15 minutes, a quarter of the time required for the first scan. That’s a good figure, but Bitdefender, K7 Ultimate Security, and Total Defense all cut scan time by more than 90% the second time around.


Many antivirus products offer protection at the web-surfing level, warning if you’re about to visit a malicious or fraudulent URL. Some work directly on incoming web traffic, but most rely on a browser extension. Surfshark does neither of these. However, the CleanWeb feature of its VPN aims to block malware-hosting sites. Before starting on my malicious URL blocking test, I made sure that the VPN was connected and CleanWeb enabled.


This test checks a product’s ability to defend against the very latest threats using a collection of malware-hosting URLs discovered in the last few days by researchers at MRG-Effitas(Opens in a new window), a London-based testing lab. I launch each URL and note whether the antivirus blocks all access, skewers the malware download, or sits on its hands. Usually, the antivirus displays a warning page when it blocks access to a page, but that’s not possible with VPN-based filtering. To distinguish actual browser errors from errors induced by the VPN’s malware blocking, I ran the test in parallel on an unprotected virtual machine.

Out of 100 fresh malware-hosting URLs, Surfshark blocked access to exactly two, causing the browser to complain “This site can’t be reached.” The real-time antivirus eliminated another 51% at the download stage. Surfshark’s score of 53% in this test is the second lowest among current products. Just to check, I ran a quick scan, which eliminated half the missed malware. However, even if the real-time component had all the same detection skills as the quick scan, the new score of 76% would still be the second lowest. Surfshark is behind the curve in this test.


Other products manage much more effective protection against malware-hosting URLs. McAfee, Norton, Sophos Home Premium, and ZoneAlarm all achieved 100% protection in this test. ZoneAlarm wiped out every sample at the point of download, while the other three blocked anywhere from a quarter to three quarters by diverting the browser from the dangerous page and eliminated the remainder during download.


Normally I would next put Surfshark through my lengthy phishing protection test. However, my company contacts confirmed that phishing protection isn’t a current feature, though they “are planning that this will include website phishing prevention in the near future.”

Awkward Private Search Engine

You’ve heard that the major search engines harvest tons of data from your behavior. Search for something in the morning, start seeing ads for it in the afternoon. Surfshark Search promises that you can “Search privately and get truly organic results.” This feature looks like it’s part of the main Surfshark One collection, but when you actually enter a search term, it opens Surfshark Search in your default browser.

Searching with Surfshark is very much like searching with DuckDuckGo, StartPage, or any other privacy-focused search engine, with a few exceptions. Using DuckDuckGo doesn’t require you to log in, while Surfshark Search only works from your Surfshark account. And I have never seen DuckDuckGo display “Failed to load results, please try again later or contact support,” whereas that message came up several times during my Surfshark testing. This component doesn’t yet add any real value to Surfshark One.

Data Breach Alerts

Surfshark Alert scans known breaches for appearances of your email addresses, credit cards, and national IDs. This is sensitive information, so before you can use this feature you must enable multi-factor authentication.


You manage Surfshark Alert from your online account. As soon as you turn it on, it starts checking known breaches to see if your associated email account has turned up. You can add your other email addresses for full coverage. Surfshark requires verification for each added address, so you can’t abuse it to troll other people’s email breaches.

In testing, I found more than a dozen breaches, but they were all either old or vague. To be fair, that’s the case with every such breach search service I’ve seen. Even so, you should take the time to go through them all. If you recognize any sites where you have an account, go change the password and then archive the item. For the numerous vague items like “Collection #4” or “Breach compilation,” there’s nothing you can do. Just archive them so that, if anything new comes up, it will stand out.


The alert system can also look for exposure of your credit cards. When you type in the card number, Surfshark automatically figures out whether it’s Visa, MasterCard, and so on. I entered the standard Visa testing number with some trepidation, giving that doing so in some other products resulted in over 100 hits. Surfshark found just one, from 2011.

It’s clear that the company intends to extend scanning to the national IDs of many countries, but at present it covers just three: Bulgaria, Lithuania, and the US. I entered a made-up SSN and discovered it had been exposed in a breach at an unspecified time.


You can set Surfshark to send you an overall report of data breach activity on a quarterly or yearly basis, but I don’t see a lot of value there. More important is paying attention to any new breach alerts as they happen. I was pleased to find one button to remove all data that was entered for tracking. I always clean up after testing any such service, to avoid drowning in notifications.


This kind of scan for exposed personal data is common in antivirus products and suites, but Surfshark goes a bit beyond with its checking of credit cards and SSNs. On the other hand, products like IDX Privacy and IDShield do a vastly more thorough job of combing the Dark Web for traces of your personal info.

Protection for macOS

As noted, you can use your five Surfshark Antivirus licenses to install protection on Windows, macOS, or Android devices. To protect a Mac, just visit your account online to download the installer. Once installed, this app looks as identical as possible to its Windows counterpart. It has the same airy main window, with the same left-rail menu offering VPN, Alert, Antivirus, Search, and Settings.

What else is the same? Well, Alert and Search are web-based apps, not bound to any platform, so they’re precisely the same. And our testing of the standalone VPN showed that it has almost precisely the same features and settings as the Windows edition.


As for the antivirus, it looks amazingly similar to its Windows cousin, right down to the fact that it can detect and eliminate Windows malware. Why is that important? It’s true that your Mac can’t “catch” a Windows virus, but it could serve to transfer tainted files to a Windows box on the network. To test this feature, I load my Windows-based samples on a USB drive and plug it into the test Mac. Surfshark jumped into action immediately, putting 88% of the samples into quarantine. Real-time protection actually worked better on the Mac than in the Windows edition. Under Windows, Surfshark only caught 71% of the same samples on sight.

I don’t have the expertise to analyze macOS malware for hands-on testing. Still, it seems likely that Surfshark would be at least as effective against malware designed for macOS.


Many cross-platform security suites offer a full panoply of features on Windows but drastically less for macOS. I’m quite impressed to see that Surfshark doesn’t stint on its Mac protection.

Protection for Android

You can install Surfshark on your Android by logging in to your account, if you like. However, it’s a lot easier to log in on a desktop and scan the QR code for Android installation.


Installed on Android, Surfshark clearly bears a resemblance to its Mac and Windows counterparts, though the mobile form factor forces some rearrangement. The main window defaults to showing VPN status, with four buttons across the bottom labeled VPN, Locations, One, and Settings.


From the Locations window you can pick a server location, or choose a special Static IP or Multi-Hop server. Our testing of the standalone VPN shows that Surfshark brings its full power to the Android platform.

Clicking the One button brings up a menu of the three features Surfshark One brings to the party: Surfshark Alert, Surfshark Antivirus, and Surfshark Search. As noted earlier, Surfshark Alert and Surfshark Search are platform independent. The antivirus component is a bit different on Android. It offers just one kind of scan rather than a choice of quick or full, and that scan finishes in just a few minutes. But it still offers scheduled scanning and real-time protection, as well as an Android-specific Storage scan option. According to the app, Storage scan extends scanning to apps and files that have been downloaded but not installed yet.


If you’ve used Android security software before, you may be looking around for the other features. Where’s the anti-theft support? Is there a scan for apps that are using inappropriate permissions? Does it back up my contacts? Will it warn me about battery-hog apps? Surfshark does none of those things. It focuses on antivirus protection and, of course, on its powerful VPN.

An Unbalanced New Suite

At the core of Surfshark One is Editors’ Choice Surfshark VPN. We love that VPN. But we can’t love the antivirus in this suite—at least, not yet. It scores from so-so to dismal in our tests, and it lacks the expected protection against malicious and fraudulent websites. The antivirus is a young product, with some growing to do. That said, Surfshark's VPN has improved markedly since we've been covering it, so we look forward to seeing what the company can do with this suite in succeeding releases. For now, I’d advise sticking with Surfshark VPN and adding a separate free antivirus product. Our current favorite is Avast One Essential.


In the realm of cross-platform, multi-device security suites, Norton 360 Deluxe is our Editors’ Choice. It includes VPN protection for five devices, with no limits on bandwidth or available servers. As a standalone, the VPN doesn’t rate quite as high as Surfshark, but it still does the job. And Norton’s time-tested antivirus is much better, with excellent to perfect scores from four antivirus labs. In addition, its dark web scanning for exposed private data goes significantly beyond Surfshark Alert. Yes, it costs a little more, but it’s worth the price.


Pros

  • Award-winning VPN protection

  • Full support for Windows, macOS, and Android

  • Alerts on exposure of your private data

  • Cons

  • Poor scores in our hands-on malware protection test

  • Dismal score in our malware download blocking test

  • Limited filtering of malicious sites, none of fraudulent sites

  • Lacks Android feature found in competing products

  • No test results from labs we follow

  • View More

    The Bottom Line

    The Surfshark One suite offers a different collection of features from the typical security suite, centered on the Editors' Choice Surfshark VPN.

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