The first time I spotted a free license for McAfee antivirus is when AOL Active Virus Shield that is using Kaspersky engine has been replaced with McAfee VirusScan Plus Special Edition. About half a year later, again I found that NetWest bank giving out free copies of McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008. And now after seven months, I stumbled on yet another offer to get free 1 year license for McAfee VirusScan Plus offered to Department of Defense employees!

McAfee VirusScan Plus offers proactive PC security to prevent malicious attacks, so you can protect what you value as well as surf, search, and download files online with confidence. McAfee SiteAdvisors Web safety ratings help you avoid unsafe Web sites. This service also provides security against multi-pronged attacks by combining antivirus and antispyware technologies. McAfees security service continuously delivers the latest software so your protection is never out-of-date. You can now easily add and manage security for multiple PCs in your home. Moreover, improved performance allows it to protect, without disturbing you.

Continue reading on how to get your free one year McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008 even if you’re not a Department of Defense employee.

1. Open this page http://us.mcafee.com/en-us/affiliates/dod/landingpages/ in your favorite web browser.

2. Check “I certify that I am a current employee of the Department of Defense”, select any department from the drop down list and click Sign-Up Now button below McAfee VirusScan Plus.

3. You need to enter your first name, last name, email address, password and click I Agree button. Do that note that your password must contain at least one letter and one number.

4. After successfully created your account, click Go to My Account button.

5. You should see that you have McAfee VirusScan Plus 1 year subscription at My Protection Products. Click the Download button.

6. Click I Agree.

7. Click Download button to start downloading DMSetup.exe. The file is only 1.16MB in size and run the file once completed downloading.

8. Right now you should be able to select either Typical or Custom installation for McAfee VirusScan Plus. If not, you’ll have to login with the email and password which you’ve entered at step 3. Click next and it’ll start downloading the antivirus. Installation will be automatically started once download is complete. McAfee VirusScan Plus includes VirusScan, Firewall and SiteAdvisor.

I didn’t notice any difference between the McAfee VirusScan Plus offered for Department of Defense and Special Edition from AOL other than the a logo that says “Special Edition from AOL”. Actually this McAfee VirusScan Plus offer has been going on for 4 years already. SysOpt forums first posted about this on 4-10-2004. The latest version of McAfee VirusScan Plus is 2009 v13 but the AOL special edition and also this DoD offer is only offering McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008 v12. If you like McAfee products, then go ahead and install it on your computer. If not, wait for a few days more for me to announce the winners of Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 giveaway. Do take note that the last time I tested McAfee VirusScan Plus for memory usage, it takes up as much as nearly 90MB on a clean Windows XP during idle and the memory usage could go up to 140MB during scanning.