Samsung wants Galaxy S9 buyers to use its super-cheap built-in VPN service

Samsung Galaxy S9

Over at MWC, Samsung announced that it has hooked up with McAfee to provide anti-malware protection and a VPN offering on its new Galaxy S9 smartphone, as well as the Galaxy Note 8, across Europe and the US – alongside beefing up security on smart TVs, PCs and notebooks.

Samsung says the new Galaxy S9 and Galaxy Note 8 will have McAfee VirusScan pre-installed to provide protection from malware, along with Samsung’s Secure Wi-Fi service.

The latter is the aforementioned VPN offering built on McAfee’s backend infrastructure, which encrypts your traffic when using unprotected and potentially insecure public Wi-Fi.

Secure Wi-Fi is already pre-installed on the Note 8 in the US, and this offering is now coming to Europe. If you’re a Galaxy Note 8 owner, you’ll be able to grab it through a software update, and as mentioned, it’s built into the new Galaxy S9 as well.

As for VPN usage, you’ll get 250MB of monthly data allowance for free, and after that, a months’ worth of unlimited usage will set you back $2 (around £1.40). 24 hours of unlimited usage will run to $1 (£0.70).

More security smarts

Samsung is also hooking up with the security firm to deliver McAfee Security for TV across the company’s range of smart TVs in some 175 countries worldwide, after this feature launched in the US and South Korea last year. It scans all apps that run on the TV in order to detect and remove malware.

Finally, McAfee LiveSafe now comes on all 2018 Samsung PCs and notebooks, complete with a 60-day free trial, and a discounted subscription offer following that.

MWC (Mobile World Congress) is the world's largest exhibition for  the mobile industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and more. TechRadar is reporting live from Barcelona all week  to bring you the very latest from the show floor. Head to our dedicated MWC 2018 hub to see all the new releases, along with TechRadar's world-class analysis and buying advice about your next phone.  

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).