A comparison library
Mobile security subscriptions, compared for readers in Australia
Synthworks Online is a reference library about consumer security software: what the separate pieces of a subscription actually do, how the job changes between Android, iOS and Windows, and which parts of the sales pitch are worth testing against your own situation before you pay for anything.
- Published by
- Celinopex s.r.o., a company registered in the Czech Republic
- Written for
- Readers in Australia — Australian consumer law, Australian reporting channels, prices in AUD
- How it is funded
- Paid affiliate links to one covered product, disclosed on every page that carries one
- What it collects
- Nothing. No forms, no cookies, no analytics, no tracking of any kind
How this library earns money
Some links here go to TotalAV, and they are paid links. If you follow one and buy a subscription, TotalAV's affiliate programme pays Celinopex s.r.o. a commission for that sign-up. The vendor pays it, not you, and the price you see on their site is the same price you would see arriving there any other way.
That payment buys placement, not conclusions. It does not let anyone decide what these pages say, what order the comparisons run in, or which limitations get mentioned. It does set the boundary of the library: the commercial relationship is the reason TotalAV is the product written about in depth here, and the comparison method page states that plainly rather than dressing a one-product library up as a survey of the market. The full disclosure page sets out the arrangement in detail.
The four separate jobs sold inside one subscription
Security software is marketed as a single product and built as a bundle. A subscription usually contains several tools that solve different problems, run in different places and fail in different ways. Reading the bundle as one thing called "protection" is what makes the comparison hard, because two products with identical feature lists can behave nothing alike once you look at which of these four jobs each one is really doing.
| Component | The job it does | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Malware scanning | Examines files and installed applications and compares them against known-bad signatures and behavioural rules. | Nothing about a legitimate application you were persuaded to install and grant permissions to. |
| Web and link filtering | Checks addresses against reputation lists before the page loads, which is where most phishing is caught. | Stop a brand-new address that no list has seen yet, or a message you open outside the browser it protects. |
| VPN tunnelling | Encrypts traffic between your device and the provider's server, and hides your address from the network you are joined to. | Make you anonymous, block malware, or hide anything from a site you have signed in to. |
| Credential and data monitoring | Watches breach corpora for an email address you nominate and tells you when it appears. | Remove the data, prevent the breach, or act on your behalf afterwards. |
Every page in this library is built on that split. What each type of protection does works through the four in full, including the overlaps with tools your device and browser already give you at no cost.
What sits in the library right now
One product is covered in depth: TotalAV, a consumer security subscription sold for Android, iOS and Windows, and for tablets on those platforms. That is the product Celinopex s.r.o. has an affiliate relationship with, and the honest description of this library is a detailed account of one option rather than a ranked field of many.
The products covered page keeps a strict line between two categories: what the vendor states about the product, and what is simply not stated anywhere reliable. Nothing is filled in from assumption. There are no scores here, no test results, no star ratings and no benchmark figures, because running those tests is not something this publisher does, and reprinting numbers without having run them is how affiliate pages end up misleading people.
Paid link. Celinopex s.r.o. receives a commission from TotalAV if you subscribe after following it; your price is unchanged, and the commission has no bearing on what is written above.
Reading the method before reading the comparisons
What decides the order and the content here
Coverage depth follows the commercial relationship and is declared wherever it applies. Everything else follows three rules: a product claim appears only if the vendor states it; a general claim about risk, law or rights links to the body that says it; and anything unverified is written as unverified rather than smoothed over. Where a page compares, the criteria are listed before the comparison, so the criteria can be argued with.
The reasoning behind each of those rules, and what they rule out, is on how comparisons here are built.
Your device decides more than the brochure does
The largest single factor in what a security subscription can do for you is not the brand on it. It is the operating system it has been installed on. On Windows, a security application can inspect the file system and watch other processes. On Android, it works inside a permission model that allows a good deal of that but not all of it. On iOS, third-party applications cannot scan other applications at all, so an iOS security app is doing filtering, VPN and monitoring work under a name that implies something broader.
A reader comparing two products without accounting for that is comparing marketing copy. Android, iOS and Windows side by side sets out what is technically possible on each platform, which built-in protections you already have, and which paid features duplicate something free.
What Australian law already gives you
Consumer software sold in Australia is subject to the Australian Consumer Law, which is administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Consumer guarantees under that law apply regardless of what a vendor's own terms say, and misleading conduct in trade is enforceable against whoever engaged in it — a point that binds this publisher as much as any vendor.
Personal information is governed by the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, overseen by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which is also where a privacy complaint goes if the organisation you raised it with does not resolve it. Those two frameworks are the practical background to subscriptions, renewals and refunds, which covers how automatic renewal works, what a vendor's refund window is and is not, and how a consumer guarantee sits on top of both.
If something has already happened
Security software is bought before an incident and is close to useless after one. Australia has free public services for the aftermath, and they are the right first call rather than any product:
- Australian Cyber Security Centre — the Commonwealth's cyber security agency, which publishes step-by-step guidance for individuals and small businesses and takes incident reports.
- Scamwatch — run by the National Anti-Scam Centre at the ACCC, for reporting scams and reading current warnings.
- eSafety Commissioner — the regulator for online safety, including image-based abuse, cyberbullying and adult cyber abuse.
Reporting a scam in Australia explains which of these to approach first depending on what has happened, and what each of them can and cannot do once contacted.
Three ways through this library
- Start with the vocabularySignature, heuristic, zero-day, kill switch, DNS leak — defined without the sales gloss, with the reason each term is worth knowing.
- Start with the componentsThe four jobs above, taken one at a time, with what each replaces and what it duplicates.
- Start with the moneyIntroductory pricing, renewal pricing, cancellation and what the Australian Consumer Law adds to the vendor's own policy.
Nothing on this site is professional security advice, and no page here should be read as saying anything about the state of the device you are reading it on. See the terms for the full position.