Pros & Cons
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- Perfect scores from four testing labs
- Full-featured Android protection
- Useful home network security scanner
- Anti-theft for laptops and Android
- Includes spam filtering
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- Limited parental control
- Poor score in hands-on malware protection test
ESET Home Security Essential Specs
| Antispam | |
| Application Privacy Scan | |
| Behavior-Based Detection | |
| Blocks Unwanted Calls | |
| Firewall | |
| Malicious URL Blocking | |
| On-Access Malware Scan | |
| On-Demand Malware Scan | |
| Parental Control | |
| Phishing Protection | |
| Snaps Photo of Thief | |
| VPN | None |
Many security companies offer a simple product line, including a standalone antivirus, a more powerful security suite, and a mega-suite that’s bursting with additional features. With ESET, your upgrade from basic antivirus protection is a bundle called ESET Home Security Essential, which contains the familiar ESET security suite and several other independent security apps. Between the suite and the ancillary programs, it really packs in features, some (but not all) of which are top-notch. If you’re shopping for a feature-packed entry-level security suite, we recommend Bitdefender Total Security, our Editors' Choice winner. It boasts even more security components than ESET, and they all proved effective in testing.
What Do You Get With ESET Home Security Essential?
In years past, ESET followed the typical pattern, offering an entry-level security suite (ESET Internet Security) and an advanced suite with additional features (ESET Smart Security Premium). These two still exist, but they’re not sold as separate programs. Rather, each forms the core of an ESET Home Security bundle. ESET Home Security Essential, reviewed here, incorporates ESET Internet Security, ESET NOD32 Antivirus, ESET Cyber Security for Mac, ESET Mobile Security for Android, and the unusual ESET Smart TV Security (an Android app for smart TVs).
You manage this gaggle of components through the aptly named ESET Home online dashboard. Log in to ESET Home to view all your licenses and the devices you have protected. From this dashboard, you can open a license and add protection to the current device, or send an email link to install it on another device.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Shifting to the device management view, you can quickly see if your devices have security issues. You can obtain details on any reported problems, but you must visit the affected computer to address them. There’s no remote configuration control like what you get with Sophos Home Premium and a few others. The online dashboard is also the spot to manage the anti-theft component discussed below.
How Much Does ESET Home Security Essential Cost?
A one-license subscription to this suite costs $49.99 per year, the same as F-Secure Internet Security. Additional licenses, up to 10, add $5 per year to the subscription price. For example, a three-license ESET subscription costs $59.99, approximately $20 less than the three-license price for Trend Micro Internet Security and $40 less than three McAfee Total Protection licenses.
Five ESET licenses would cost $69.99 per year, roughly the same as F-Secure and ZoneAlarm Extreme Security. You pay a good bit more, $119.99 per year, for five Norton 360 Deluxe licenses. Note that with Norton, you get five licenses for a powerful security suite, five no-limits VPN licenses, and 50GB of online storage for your backups.
Pricing for Bitdefender Total Security is simple. Your cost is $109.99 for a five-license individual subscription or $139.99 for a family pack of 25 licenses. The five-license price is well above ESET's $69.99, but if ESET's pricing extended to 25 devices, that would cost $169.99
McAfee+ doesn’t cap the number of devices you can protect. A $149.99 yearly subscription covers every Windows, macOS, Android, ChromeOS, and iOS device in your household. There’s no direct comparison between ESET and McAfee’s no-limits play, but in general, ESET costs a bit less than most of the competition.
Getting Started With ESET Home Security Essential
Installing ESET's device-level security suite protection on a PC is simple. Simply log in and download the ESET Internet Security installer. You can also install protection on macOS and Android devices or get an email with an installation link.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)As with the standalone antivirus, ESET Internet Security no longer features the blue-eyed ESET cyborg. The main window of the suite resembles that of the antivirus. Four large panels represent four security areas: Browser Privacy & Security, Network Inspector, Anti-Theft, and Safe Banking & Browsing. A color-coded banner above reflects the security status of your installation.
The antivirus has three panels below the banner: Update, Scan Your Computer, and Security Report. Those functions are still accessible in the suite; you just reach them through the menu on the left. The suite’s menu offers seven options: Overview, Computer scan, Update, Tools, Setup, Help and Support, and ESET Home account. These are the same left-menu options that you find in the standalone antivirus.
Antivirus Features
This suite builds on the antivirus protection found in ESET NOD32 Antivirus. My antivirus review provides detailed information about these features; I hope you'll take a look. Here, I offer a digest of those findings.
ESET participates in tests by four of the five independent labs whose reporting I follow, with uniformly perfect scores. Along with Malwarebytes Premium and Norton, it reached Level 1 certification in the tough tests administered by MRG-Effitas. It also scored 100% in the latest round of testing by AVLab Cybersecurity Foundation, though, to be fair, so did the rest of the tested security apps.
Rather than using a numeric scale, the researchers at AV-Comparatives certify antivirus tools as Advanced+, Advanced, or Standard, based on their performance. ESET achieved Advanced+ in all three tests from this lab. Avast One Gold, AVG Internet Security, and Norton took the same trifecta.
With AV-Test Institute, products receive up to six points in each of three categories: protection, performance, and usability. An app gets a high usability score by avoiding false positives (wrongly identifying a valid app or website as dangerous). In the latest report from this lab, almost two-thirds of the tested antivirus apps reached a perfect 18 points, ESET among them.
For comparison purposes, I use an algorithm that maps all the tests to a 10-point scale and derives an aggregate lab score. With perfect scores from four labs, ESET’s aggregate score is a perfect 10. The only way to beat that is with a perfect score from five labs. Currently, Norton is the only app to dominate the field in this manner.
Also tested by all five labs, Avast managed an aggregate score of 9.6 points. Microsoft Defender Antivirus wasn’t far behind, with 9.4 points.
ESET eschews the quick scan offered by many competitors. Its full scan finished in 81 minutes, a good bit quicker than the current average of just under two hours. In addition to its unusual UEFI firmware scan, the custom scan option offers a scan of the system Registry and the WMI databases, in each case seeking malware disguised as data and links to infected files.
In my own hands-on malware protection test, ESET detected 87% of the samples. However, the fact that a significant number of samples managed to install executable files despite ESET’s detection dragged its overall score down to 8.1 out of 10 possible points. That’s the lowest score among apps tested with my current sample set. It’s quite a contrast with ESET’s perfect lab test scores. When my results don’t align with the lab results, I give the lab scores more weight.
Using a feed of malware-hosting URLs recently discovered by researchers at MRG-Effitas, I tested ESET's ability to block the latest prevalent malware. Out of 100+ verified malware-hosting URLs, ESET blocked all access for 42% of them and eliminated another 55% by detecting the malware. Its total score of 97% is good, matching the latest scores from G Data Internet Security, McAfee, Total Defense Ultimate Internet Security, and Webroot Premium.
A few competitors achieved the maximum scores in this test. Avira Internet Security, Bitdefender, Guardio, and Sophos all achieved 100% protection.
The same component that watches for dangerous sites should also foil phishing sites—fraudulent pages that imitate secure sites to steal your credentials. ESET detected 100% of the verified frauds, putting it in the winners’ circle. The other recent 100% winners are: AVG, Avira, Guardio, McAfee, Norton Genie, Surfshark One, and Webroot.
Other Shared Features
ESET's Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) aims to prevent attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in your operating system or applications. When I tested it with real exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration testing tool, ESET actively blocked 29% of them, identifying most by their official names. No exploits breached security, as the test system was fully patched. That 29% score sounds low, but even the most effective security tools didn’t score much over 50% in their latest evaluations.
ESET offers ransomware protection as part of HIPS, but it didn’t prove out in testing. I disabled the real-time antivirus component to test ransomware protection in action and released a dozen real-world malware samples. One did nothing—with no behavior, there’s no detection. ESET caught and completely contained five samples. It caught another three but allowed them to encrypt some files before quashing them, as many as a thousand. As for the remaining three, it completely missed them. ESET’s non-ransomware-specific antivirus components eliminated all the file-encrypting ransomware samples when I allowed them to act. However, even with all protective layers active, a disk-encrypting ransomware sample managed to slip through and render the test virtual machine inert.
Device Control in ESET is probably better suited to a business setting than the home. It puts you in control of a wide variety of device types, including card readers, imaging devices, Bluetooth devices, and more traditional external drives. You could, for example, ban all USB drives but allow exceptions for specific drives or users. Some tech-savvy parents might use Device Control to prevent their kids from mounting potentially infected USB drives, but the feature is likely beyond the average user's capabilities.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Both the antivirus and the suite feature an impressive array of security-related tools, some designed for your use and others more suitable for a tech support agent. The most important is SysInspector, which snapshots every detail about the state of your PC and includes the ability to show what changed from one snapshot to another. Be sure to run SysInspector and save a baseline snapshot in case you (or a tech support agent) need it to diagnose a problem later. I’m sad to report that SysInspector no longer includes the ability to compare two snapshots and report on the changes made. Compared with the core antivirus, the suite adds Network connections and Network Inspector, which I’ll discuss below.
Protection for macOS
As noted, you can use one of your NOD32 licenses to protect a Mac with ESET Cyber Security for Mac. Naturally, you can also use a suite license for this purpose. In years past, using a suite license would have provided you with the enhanced Pro edition of the Mac antivirus; however, that edition is no longer available. Currently, a suite license costs more but doesn’t increase protection on the Mac.
Firewall
Windows Firewall does a fine job of fending off external attacks and making ports invisible by putting them in stealth mode. A third-party firewall that can't match the built-in firewall is failing. Fortunately, ESET's firewall successfully handled these tasks in testing, both defending against web-based attacks and reporting its actions accordingly.
The primary benefit third-party firewalls offer is the ability to prevent the misuse of your internet connection by controlling network permissions for local programs. Out of the box, ESET doesn't offer this feature. Its default Automatic mode simply allows all outbound network traffic and blocks unsolicited incoming connections.
To enable program control, you must switch the firewall to Interactive mode. Now, when it detects an unknown program attempting internet or network access, it asks you whether to allow or deny access. And by unknown, I mean any program that your installation of ESET hasn’t processed before. There’s no database of known good programs or Windows components.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)You can make your choice a one-time selection, have it last through the current session, or set it as a rule for ESET to remember. One-off is the default, meaning you’ll see this pop-up repeatedly until you make a rule. Clicking for more details displays the URL and port the app was attempting to access, along with other relevant information. Clicking Advanced Options allows you to fine-tune the rule that ESET should use. For most users, these details and advanced options will prove impenetrable.
It gets worse. If you've set a password to protect ESET’s configuration settings, you'll be prompted to enter that password after every firewall pop-up response. Whether you’ve set a password or not, you're also hit with a User Account Control pop-up.
Some firewalls, like the one built into ZoneAlarm Extreme Security, use a huge database of known programs, so you hardly ever encounter an unknown. Not ESET. On my test system, immediately after enabling Interactive mode and before doing anything else, I had to go through the whole pop-up rigmarole several times. It didn’t merely trigger for apps like Chrome and Opera. It also asked how to handle internal Windows components. Blocking one of those by mistake could really screw things up.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Those additional steps, layered on top of a seriously old-fashioned firewall pop-up query system, make this the most annoying firewall ever. Norton 360 Deluxe handles security decisions internally, automatically setting permissions for known good programs, removing permissions for known malicious ones, and keeping a sharp eye on unknown programs. Additionally, as noted, ZoneAlarm maintains a vast database of known good files, so if it flags a program as unknown, you should take notice.
A firewall isn't worth much if malware can circumvent it, so I always try to disable protection using techniques that a malware coder would use. ESET resisted my every attempt. It doesn't expose anything in the Registry that would permit turning off protection, and when I tried to terminate its four processes, it refused me with an "Access Denied" message. As for its three Windows services, it suppressed the ability to stop the service. When I tried to get sneaky and set each service’s startup mode to Disabled, it protected two. The third, called ESET Communications Forwarder, remained disabled after reboot, but I couldn’t see any effect on ESET’s capabilities.
This firewall handles outside attacks, true, but then Windows Firewall does that job. The bonus you get from a third-party firewall is program control, and, out of the box, ESET doesn’t attempt program control. If you enable that feature, you get a terrible torrent of confusing pop-ups.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Before I proceed to other features, I would like to mention the Intrusion Detection System (IDS). IDS is often a feature of standalone firewalls. This component analyzes network traffic to protect against attacks across the network. ESET’s basic antivirus has HIPS but not IDS, so I repeated the exploit protection test. The results remained unchanged, with no action taken by the IDS.
Parental Control for Windows
Parental control system features cover a wide range these days. Filtering out inappropriate content is a core feature, often accompanied by screen-time limits or scheduling. Some parental control systems monitor social media and chat, letting parents see or control their child's contacts. Others track the child's location via smartphone or even define geofences, such that parents receive a notification when the child crosses a specified boundary. You'll find apps that enforce age limits on games the child uses, lock Safe Search to the ON position, require regular breaks from screen time, and more. Out of all these possibilities, ESET only applies content filtering.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)ESET doesn't enable parental control automatically since many users don't need it. When you do turn it on, you must define a password to protect your settings. You now need a password for every settings change, including (as noted earlier) every response to a firewall pop-up. You also must identify every Windows user account as belonging to a parent or a child and enter the birthdate for child accounts.
Based on the birthdate, ESET pre-configures which of its three dozen content categories to block. Parents can fine-tune the category selection, a task made slightly awkward by the fact that you can only see seven of the categories at a time in the small scrolling window. Many similar systems make you put an X next to categories that should be blocked. ESET swings the other way; everything is blocked except for categories that you’ve OK’ed with a checkmark.
When I switched to a child account for testing, the content filter blocked inappropriate sites, even sites merely selling women's lingerie. When last tested, it missed quite a few, including some with truly raunchy porn videos. This time, I couldn’t slip anything past the content filter.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)With help from its browser extension, ESET correctly displayed its site-block warning for secure HTTPS porn sites. An off-brand browser simply displayed an error for blocked HTTPS pages, while ESET slid in a pop-up explaining why the page didn’t display. Since ESET handles HTTPS sites, your too-clever teen won't slip past the filter by using a secure anonymizing proxy.
Back in the parent account, I checked the logs and found that ESET logged all blocked websites, including the date/time stamp, the user account involved, and the content category that triggered the filter. However, truly inappropriate sites were buried in reams and reams of URLs for ads and other third-party content.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)That's it for parental control on Windows. You don't get any of the other features I mentioned above, and you must configure protection separately for every Windows ESET installation.
At one time, ESET Home Security Essential included a separate Android-only parental control app, also available as a standalone app. It was a modern, cross-device parental tool managed through the ESET Home dashboard. However, the company halted sales of the Android parental app in June 2025 and will wholly discontinue it in June 2026.
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Spam and Email Protection
Chances are good that your incoming email stream gets junk mail and spam filtered out before you ever see it. That's the standard these days. If you're one of the few still needing a local spam filter, ESET is up to the job. It also checks for malware in your email. Where many antispam tools limit filtering to POP3 mail, ESET also handles IMAP accounts.
ESET used to integrate with various Microsoft-provided email services, but all of those except Outlook have fallen by the wayside. If you do use Outlook, you can integrate ESET’s spam protection directly. If you moved on to an email client like Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird, or The Bat!, you'll need to define message rules to send spam and infected messages into the appropriate folder.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)You have full control over the spam filter's configuration, from fine-tuning the ports used for different protocols to adjusting the parameters of ESET's ThreatSense detection system. If you're smart, you won't exercise this control, as the system's default settings offer optimal protection.
The one area you may want to tweak is the allowlist/blocklist system. ESET automatically allows addresses found in your contacts, people you send messages to, and senders of messages you actively classify as not spam. You can add to this list to ensure you never miss valid messages, or you can add to the blocklist to block all mail from specific addresses or domains.
Once again, most people don't need this component, but if you require a local spam filter, ESET can take care of the task for you.
Network Inspector
An antivirus or security suite can protect your Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS devices, but what about your connected devices, such as a video doorbell, online security camera, or smart toaster? There's no way to install security on these devices, but ESET at least helps you track down what's connected to your home network and flag devices with security issues.
The Network Inspector, launched by clicking a panel in the main window, displays a list of all the devices found in your network. I discovered that you don’t have to wait around for a scan. Rather, it scans in the background and even notifies you when new devices connect to the network.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)The display names each device that provides name information. It also attempts to identify the device as one of a dozen types, among them TV, NAS, and game console. Digging into details for an unknown device, you get the IP address, MAC address, and (if available) manufacturer’s name. Network experts who can identify an unknown device based on this data are free to assign a friendly name and select a corresponding device type.
If the network inspector identifies network services used by a device or if the firewall has blocked any traffic from the device, that device gets flagged with a circled-i information icon. In the device’s detail report, you can see what services are used and what traffic was blocked, but unless you’re a network expert, there’s no point. You might think the link titled Disconnecting the Device would provide a way to cut off an intruder, but it simply opens the router’s interface. Figuring out how to disable the offender using that interface is a DIY task, one best left to experts.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Where appropriate, the detail report includes a button to open the device’s network interface. For example, it provided quick access to my network-aware printer’s embedded web server.
Avast includes a similar scanner, as does AVG. However, ESET’s Network Inspector scanner stands out with its clear information and effective access to useful settings.
Anti-Theft System
For those oh-so-portable Android phones, loss or theft may pose a greater security threat than malware infection. For Windows desktop computers, which are typically tied to power, network, and peripherals by a snarl of cables, not so much. However, laptops are so powerful these days that they can replace almost any desktop, and laptops are easily lost or stolen. Even so, not many security suites offer anti-theft protection beyond mobile devices. Bitdefender Total Security is among the very few that can locate, lock, or wipe a stolen Windows laptop. ESET won't remotely wipe a stolen device, but it can locate it, lock it down, and snap screenshots and webcam pictures of the thief.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)When you first enable anti-theft, ESET checks your system for any required optimization steps. If you've configured the laptop to log in automatically without a password, well, that’s a bad idea. ESET helps you fix the problem. In addition, it helps you create what it calls a phantom account. When it locks your system, nothing is visible but that phantom account. The thief can't access other accounts or their files.
You manage anti-theft for your devices from the ESET Home dashboard. If you didn’t complete the optimization steps for any device, you’ll get a warning here. You can click a button to mark the device as missing or click for a simple test of the anti-theft system. The test generates a report that includes a snapshot of the screen, a picture from the webcam (if available), and the device’s location (when possible).
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)When ESET sees that you've flagged the device as missing, it reboots and logs in to the phantom account. It starts collecting the device's location and snapping screenshots. It continues to do this for two weeks. If you suspect the device is merely lost, you can send a message to the finder.
I marked my virtual machine test system as missing. Within a minute, it rebooted into the phantom account. On the test system, Windows went through the usual setup steps for a new user account after rebooting. ESET doesn't mention this, but I suggest you log into the phantom account at least once after creating it, to get those steps out of the way.
I tried to switch away from the phantom account, but the other Windows accounts didn't show up. And when I tried to open folders belonging to those accounts, Windows wouldn't let me, unless I entered an Administrator password (something the thief wouldn't have).
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)As noted, you can send a message to a missing computer in the hope that a helpful person has found it. In testing, the message appeared quickly on the test PC’s desktop. Every ten minutes, ESET snapped a screenshot that I could view in the online console. Had the test system been equipped with a webcam, it would have also snapped pictures of whoever was in front of the device.
ESET analyzes Wi-Fi signals to determine the device's location. My virtual machine test system has a wired connection, so no location data was available. To wrap up the test, I marked the device as recovered. The virtual machine quickly unlocked and rebooted to the login screen.
Clearly, anti-theft protection is most useful on a laptop. A portable device is more likely to go missing than a desktop PC tethered by its wires and cables. If you install ESET on a laptop, be sure to go through the optimization steps. Once you've done so, log in to the phantom user account to get past those introductory screens from Windows. Now, if your laptop goes walkabout, you're prepared.
Safe Banking and Browsing
You can access any of ESET’s features from the left-rail menu, but four features also get a big, prominent button panel, among them Safe Banking & Browsing. Clicking this panel launches a hardened version of your default browser. You'll know it's active, as it gives the browser a glowing border and an ESET tab along the edge that expands into an explainer. This feature is supported by Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. If your default browser isn’t one of these, ESET launches Edge instead.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Bitdefender’s similar SafePay feature activates whenever you visit a known financial site, offering to switch from the unsecured browser to a protected one. I couldn’t find a banking site that triggered such an offer from ESET, but you can add any site manually to a list of sites that always use the secure browser. Rather than use a browser with a glowing border, Bitdefender displays it on an entirely separate desktop. Banking protection in G Data is invisible unless you encounter a problem, such as a man-in-the-middle attack.
Some security suites discourage using their secure browsing systems when you’re not performing sensitive transactions online. With ESET, it’s quite the opposite. The configuration switch called Secure all browsers, enabled by default, instructs ESET to always use secure banking mode in supported browsers.
Webcam Protection
Do you ever leave your laptop turned on while you're getting ready for bed? How would you feel about some pervy peeper viewing or even recording you while you’re slipping into your KPop Demon Hunter PJs? Creepy, right? However, malware exists that allows for the remote control of your webcam without revealing its presence by turning on the tell-tale activity light. ESET joins the fight against spyware with an extension of Device Control that keeps untrusted programs from using the webcam.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Turned on by default, this feature displays a notification when any app attempts to use your webcam. If you were just setting up a video chat, tell it to allow your video application. But if the request is unexpected, block the app and launch a malware scan. Bitdefender, Sophos, and Trend Micro (among others) offer very similar features. ESET’s Microphone Monitor feature applies similar technology to prevent anyone from listening in on you by subverting the PC’s mic.
Comprehensive Protection for Android Devices
ESET offers free Android antivirus protection, but the benefits are quite limited. You must use one of your licenses to get the full-powered Premium edition. I sent an email from the ESET Home portal with an installation link to the Pixel 9 Pro that I use for testing. I activated the installation using one of my licenses, thereby gaining access to all the Premium features.
Good Android Test Lab Scores
Three of the five testing labs I follow for Windows antivirus reviews also test Android security apps, and two of them include ESET in their latest reports. Tested under Windows, ESET earned perfect scores from four out of five labs. Its Android scores are very good, but not 100% perfect.
AV-Test Institute rates Android apps using the same Protection, Performance, and Usability criteria as it does under Windows. The last time ESET appeared in an Android-centric report from this lab, it achieved 17.5 out of 18 possible points, earning it the title of Top Product. The latest Android test report doesn’t include ESET.
The latest shared test results from AV-Comparatives rated ESET’s protective abilities at 99.6%. Bitdefender reached 100% in this test, while competing products ranged from 99.5% to 99.9%.
MRG-Effitas rates antivirus accuracy in several different ways, all of which contribute to an overall success percentage. Like Avast, Avira, G Data, and Norton, ESET achieved a score of 99.29% in this test. Bitdefender, F-Secure, Malwarebytes, and McAfee all achieved a perfect score of 100%.
The big winner in Android lab tests is Bitdefender, with perfect scores from all three labs. ESET’s scores are still very good, less than a single percentage point away from perfection.
Getting Started on Android
As is common, the ESET app requested various permissions to carry out its mission. On completion of the installation, it launched a quick scan. It suggested strengthening protection by enabling six components: Anti-Phishing, Anti-Theft, App Lock, Call Filter, Payment Protection, and Scheduled Scan. Naturally, turning on these components required giving ESET more permissions. For example, App Lock needed access to usage data. Anti-Theft needed location and camera data, as well as Device Administrator permission.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Similar to features in Bitdefender Total Security and McAfee, App Lock enables you to secure sensitive apps with a secondary PIN for added protection. Now, even a nosy friend who picks up your unlocked phone won't be able to peek at your emails, and you can give your phone to soothe a crying child without worrying that they’ll order 100 Labubus. Bitdefender takes this feature a step further, with options such as quickly leaving and returning to an app without needing a PIN or suppressing App Lock when you're on a trusted Wi-Fi network.
Anti-Theft for Android
As with the Windows-based anti-theft system, full activation of anti-theft features may require one or more optimization steps. From the ESET Home web portal, you can mark the device as missing, thereby locking it down and regularly checking its location. You can also remotely wipe the device. If you suspect the Android is somewhere nearby, you can trigger a loud siren.
In addition to the usual remote-controlled locate, lock, and wipe functions, ESET's anti-theft can lock the device if the SIM card is removed. A few competitors, including Bitdefender, offer similar SIM card locking. Since the Android device I use for testing isn't provisioned for cellular data, I am unable to test this feature.
By default, anti-theft automatically locks the device after three failed login attempts. It also snaps a photo of whoever is trying to unlock your phone.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Once you’ve responded to all the recommendations, the recommendations window vanishes. At this point, the app bears a strong resemblance to its Windows counterpart. It uses the same white background with blue buttons and the same status banner. Large feature buttons are organized into three groups: Security, Privacy, and Device. Under Security, you find a panel summarizing the Security Report, with buttons for Antivirus, Anti-Phishing, Payment Protection, and Network Inspector. The Privacy group contains Anti-Theft and App Lock. In the Device group are Call Filter, Security Audit, and Settings, along with a summary of recent activity.
One note about Network Inspector. In testing, I didn’t see it in the Security group. After conferring with my ESET contact, I learned that Network Inspector only works with Android versions 12 and later. My modern Pixel 9 Pro running Android 16 doesn’t qualify.
Useful Security Features
Be sure to enable Anti-Phishing, which protects Chrome, Firefox, and other apps, such as Facebook and Instagram. I sanity-checked it using a few actual phishing pages and found that, indeed, it displayed the proper warning. Bitdefender and Norton are among the other Android security apps that aim to fend off phishing fraud.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)In the Windows edition, Payment Protection launches an instance of your default browser that’s protected against interference. On Android, you’re as likely to use an app as a browser. Who logs onto Amazon from an Android web browser? To configure Payment Protection, you simply identify the apps that you want protected under the aegis of the Safe Launcher.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Enabling the Call Filter component requires access to calls and contacts, as well as notification privileges. As expected, this feature lets you filter out calls from unwanted callers. There’s a handy button to block the most recent caller. You can block calls from specific types, such as hidden numbers, or from all numbers not in your contacts. Again, since my Android testbed isn’t provisioned for making calls, I couldn’t actively test this feature.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Much like the privacy audit feature in McAfee and Webroot, ESET's Security Audit lists applications that have potentially risky permissions. For example, it flags apps that access your contacts or track your location. Take a moment to review these. When you tap the icon for each type of permission, you get a list and clear the notification of newfound apps. When you review the audit later, you'll see notification numbers only if new apps are involved.
Android protection in Norton 360 Deluxe takes the app-review concept to the next level, reporting on apps in the App Store before you even download them. Trend Micro reviews your apps based on the resources they use rather than on permissions.
Security Audit also checks your Android device's settings, looking out for any that may not be configured correctly. For example, it warns if the device has been rooted or if USB debugging is enabled.
Payment Protection and Call Filter are relatively new to the Android app, welcome additions that serve to make ESET’s offering a more powerful Android security utility. It includes all the expected antivirus and anti-theft capabilities, as well as app lock, security audit, and more.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: ESET)
ESET Home Security Essential
ESET Home Security Essential delivers excellent core malware protection and a broad set of features across platforms at a competitive price, making it a strong choice for users who want comprehensive security and can tolerate a few usability quirks.