Lookout Mobile Security Review: Is It Any Good?

Our Verdict

Get this antivirus if you are interested in identity protection as one of your priorities. The antivirus comes free and mid-priced premiums plans which can’t compete with Bitdefender or Norton, but its high priced plans are cheap for an identity protection package.

Pros and cons

Pros

Strong identity protection option
Solid user interface
A 14-day trial of the premium version
Easy to use
Effective web protection

Cons

Minimal free feature
Skimpy malware protection test data
No telephone or chat tech support
Heavy, slow plans

Introduction

If you are looking for a great and popular antivirus, then Lookout is the app for you.

The app has been downloaded millions of times, and comes bragging a 4.4 rating. A good component of the Lookout security is the system advisor which comes with the free version of the antivirus.

This helps report OS issues, plus essential anti-theft functions, including location and scream, which is an alarm you can trigger remotely.

Lookout Security and antivirus are also referred to as lookout personal. It has shown its strength with the focus on identity protection.

Since 2017 when the antivirus moved to its current business model, the antivirus has not made any changes to its features.

On the antivirus front, the lookout security antivirus will stand its ground against top contenders like Bitdefender mobile security and Norton mobile security.

Android users will also value the lookout identity protection services and the accompanying identity insurance, which are both competitively priced for the market.

Lookout Mobile Security Review-Payment Plans

The antivirus comes in three tiers.

The Basic Free Plan

The android free plan comes with minimum features, which include antivirus scanning, plus simple location tools, and a system advisor.

The Premium Plan

The premium plan comes at around $2.99 a month and $29.99 a year.

The premium plan comes with more features compared to the free plan. It will include anti-theft capabilities, a safe web browsing, a private browser, WI-FI networks alerts, a privacy adviser plus reports in case of any security breaches.

The Premium Plan Plus

The premium plan will cost you $9.99 a month, while if you decide to pay for it for a year, it will require $99.99.

The plan comes with even more features than most other android antivirus apps. Apart from the features found in the free plan and the premium plans, the antivirus also comes with a state of the art identity protection service and a $1 million insurance in case of identity theft.

The plan will also include a 24/7 restoration assistance available in case you lose your identity or your online wallet.

The amount may seem quite steep for an android identity protection service; however, the amount in comparison to other stand-alone identity protection devices is quite small. Most will come from around $300.

The lookout antivirus does not come with software-based for PCs or Macs, unlike most brands.

Set-Up

Installing the antivirus will only take you a few seconds, with no hassle of any kind. You will need an email address to get you a free account, after which the antivirus will run a basic scan on your device and begin monitoring it for any threats.

After the scan, the app will show a pretty simple interface with a message on the results of the scan after installation.

The interface will also show the time of the scan plus a massive green tick to enforce the results of the scan. If there are any viruses, however, there will be a large red X sign to reinforce the same.

The antivirus comes with a bit more detail in case you need it. If you navigate to security on the antivirus menu, you will find an app screen with a list of recent actions plus a scan now button, which can be used to run on-demand checks.

This may not be necessary; however, as lookout security will scan and warn you in case of any security threats or risky apps that may be present on the device.

The antivirus setting box will offer you control over security, giving you the option to enable or disable the analysis of app or downloads. This may be helpful in many scenarios, such as apps that may seem like threats to the antivirus, yet you are sure they are safe.

The app comes with a 14-day trial, and depending on which plan you subscribe to, you will access all the relevant features of the chosen plan.

Is The Lookout Antivirus a Good App, Is It Safe- Protection?

The antivirus will check apps as they come into the phone for any kind of malware virus adware riskware and any kind of threat that may come in.

An AV-comparative test carried out in 2016. The antivirus managed to block 85.2 % of real-time threats introduced to it.

Malware Protection

The antivirus comes with one of the longest full scans at around 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Unfortunately, as with most android antiviruses, the lookout security and antivirus can also not accommodate a scheduled scan.

The best advice would be to scan the phone at a time when it is idle, maybe when you go to sleep.

In case the antivirus detects a threat in the form of a web link, there will be a notification on top of the screen to inform you of a blocked malicious link. The antivirus will, however, give you the option to continue with the link.

You will also have the option to pull down the notification shade, tap it to see the full info contained in the pop-up.

Detecting Threats from Malware

The company no longer submits the antivirus to the German based independent lab for Av testing. The last time it was submitted, was in 2016, where the antivirus took a hit.

Testing for online threats registered the antivirus at 85.2%, while it registered at 77.3% for its malware tests. The testing site acts as the benchmark in terms of the effectiveness of malware blocking.

The antivirus was also tested in 2018 through the AV-comparatives android blanket evaluations. The antivirus, however, did not work too well. It passed at a 93.9% detection rate, which placed it ahead of google play protect, which came at 75.3%.

Three hundred sixty securities, aka Qihoo 360 passed at 99.3%, while Avast, Bitdefender , Kaspersky, McAfee, and Norton all got perfect 100% marks.

A different lab, however, the AV-Comparatives conducts the lesser granular and frequent android antivirus tests. Lookout Security and antivirus were included in the AV-comparatives blanket test a recent as January 2019, was the antivirus performed exceptionally well, reaching 99.6% detection rate.

The antivirus assessed and performed well among 250 android security apps. It beat some of the big commercial apps in the sit such as Malwarebytes, Webroot, Dr. Web, IObit, and more.

Looking at the trajectory of the antivirus, the app has been developing over time, increasing its effectiveness.

Free Plan Security Features

The Lookout antivirus will come with some essential features for free users. If the phone is lost, the antivirus comes with the option of locating the phone and making it ‘scream’ from the web portal at personal.lookout.com

The phone will take just a little time to find the new phone, roughly three minutes.

The portal will come with icons which will be useful in opening up a number of options for the user. The user interface is quite normal and will also come with a full-screen map.

Another security feature that comes with the antivirus is the signal flare. This comes in when the smartphone is about to die, which will record the phone’s last known location and post it to the web portal.

The antivirus comes with a behind the scenes feature which was just recently introduced to the Lookout app. The system advisor will occasionally look through your system for root detections and ensure the proper functioning of the OS.

Premium Security Features and Tools

Breach Report

The antivirus comes with a breach report. It provides two aspects to look at in the breach report. The first way will show you a breach through any services connected to the app installed the second way is through presenting a news feed listing all the latest breach.

The second way will come with instructions on what to do in case you become infected, plus a link to the source article for the breach.

The feed the antivirus will provide will be well-curated for the security beach involved and may be proved to be quite the interesting feed.

Privacy Adviser

The antivirus will allow you to view which app potentially has access to any data or hardware on your device. If you navigate to the category, the app will show you the full list of apps with access to your camera.

A good example is through tapping o an individual app that will show you the permissions it could have and will allow you to manage the positions.

A con with this feature, however, is that the antivirus may not be aware of an allowed app and a disallowed app; this means that you will have to view the permissions; however, it is misleading in as far as identifying legitimate privacy concerns.

Safe Browsing

The antivirus comes with a VPN service.

If you choose the premium or premium plus plan, then you can run the VPN constantly. The antivirus doesn’t offer any customizability on some antivirus apps’ VPNs.

The VPN is meant to protect the antivirus from any accessing any malicious downloads, phishing sites, and more.

The way safe browsing works, it will redirect your web traffic through a VPN connection, you can, however, only have one VPN connection at a time. The VPN will rarely have any interruptions, plus it will also come with safe browsing.

Safe Wi-Fi

The antivirus will also scan your Wi-Fi network, and it will establish whether any threats may be coming through this. The only downside to this is that it may miss flagging some local Wi-Fi.

Anti-Theft Protection

If you choose the premium or premium plus plans, you can remotely lock or also wipe your device.

The option comes with a lock command, which will allow you to add an email address, phone number, and custom message, which will display on the lock screen if anyone happens to find the device. The feature will be working within seconds.

If you want an email notification from your phone, which will come in the form of a photo from the front face camera, together with a location of the phone, you will need to be a premium or premium plus user.

How this works is through triggers. Some actions performed on the phone may trigger the phone to send a picture and location, including; removal of the phone’s SIM card, switching on the airplane mode, switching the phone off, trying to uninstall the program or multiple failed passcode attempts.

Premium Plus Security Features and Tools

Identity Restoration & Features

If you are paying $99.9 a year, then you expect some kind of important element to the plan. For this antivirus, identity theft protection is the kicker.

You may decide to look at dedicated identity theft solutions; however, through the lookout premium plus plan, all your problems will get solved by one app.

Although the price may seem a bit steep, the app offers quite a reasonable offer through this plan. The app will come with a 24/7 identity restoration assistant, a lost wallet recovery protocol, plus a $1 million identity theft insurance, in case of losses related to theft.

In case you need to get I contact with the restoration experts in a jiffy, you can navigate to the ”contact us” link located at the bottom of the screen, found at the insurance tab.

The onsite legal documentation for the service provides that the third party insurance vendor lookout uses interstate fire and casualty Co. of Chicago, a subsidiary of German financial service giant Allianz.

Identity Theft Protection

The other side of the premium plus plan is based on finding your private information where it shouldn’t be online.

You have the option to enter either personal information, financial information, or your social security number. Lookout will monitor the web for any signs of this data and will notify you in case they find anything

The application will also come with a social media watch feature, which will scan any connected social media apps. The app will notify you in multiple scenarios including getting tagged or posts in any explicit content.

System Impact

Evaluating the impact of running lookout security and antivirus on the device will require several tests. This will require the Geekbench 4 Android benchmarking tool, which runs on Android 9.0 Pie.

You will require to first establish a baseline performance for the device before you decide to install a lookout. You will then have to run additional tests following installation, after which you can run more tests for full malware scans.

The results show that lookout had little background system impact after the installation and a 0.48% drop off from the bassline average Geekbench 4 results. The full scan had more effect, with a 10.6% performance decrease.

These results show that lookout near the top of the pack at number three of the eight, in terms of the passive results. When it came to active scanning, the antivirus tested at nearly the bottom, though. However, it was much closer to the few apps just above it than to 360 security, which came in last.

Backup Feature

Another great thing about the lookout antivirus app is the backup feature. If you want to route your phone and even perform a factory reset, the phone will end up losing all the contacts and apps on the phone.

With the apps backup feature, you will only need to go to the online page to get to know what has been backed up. The app will backup automatically in case you forget to do so on your own.

When you access your online profile with the backup feature, you will get a list of all your contacts, which you can then download through Excel or a vCard, for import to your phone after.

Find Your Phone

Another great feature that comes with the paid versions of the app are the possibility of locating your phone. The app is quite good and may surprise you. As long as you leave your GPS working efficiently, the app will locate the phone with no problems.

You can also use the map features on the app or also bring them to another device, which will help you triangulate where the device is located.

If you also feel trusting that whoever found your phone will return it, you can send them an email alert giving them a way to contact you. The lookout app will also provide an area on the online dashboard where you can see previous locations.

If by any chance someone else possesses the phone, then it will show you the phone is on the move and then you may get the chance to follow the phone.

Enterprise

Another amazing feature with the lookout app is the enterprise feature, which is best suited for businesses. This is best suited for businesses that have a couple of devices they intend to protect and keep them away from theft.

The company will quote you different prices meant for all companies, and you will be required to contact them to get the rates.

Set-up and Support

When it comes to support and set-up, the lookout antivirus does an excellent job of guiding you through the set-up. The app doesn’t have any features that may bog you down with a lot of steps and protocols or features that may make it extensively harder to use the app.

When it comes to customer support, the app will not take anything other than email for customer support. The app will come with no options for chat, social media support, or troubleshooting questions.

According to the company, the app does not provide customer support because there is little way to verify whether you are the direct user or client speaking through the phone.

However, through email, you can be confirmed as the original writer as you have the same email registered. However, this does not prevent other antiviruses like Avast, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, McAfee, and Norton offering telephone support for their customers.

The antivirus also comes with a FAQ option for their users. You can find solutions through the FAQ before submitting a request to customer support through email. At the bottom of the antivirus page, you will find the ‘Help’ section where you can access the FAQ.

The FAQ will come with several common issues that may be on the lane of what is causing you trouble as you use the app. The app’s FAQ comes with a well-explained situation you may be going through, of which if they do not cover your problem, then you can go to the email support.

Lookout Antivirus Interface

The lookout app interphase comes with a clean minimal interface well suited for your needs. The interface does a great job of fitting a good number of features into each screen, and it will not overwhelm you; neither will it force you to scroll down.

The antivirus will also come with a settings option that will not be as obvious to navigate to, but if you need to, it is quite easy to reach. However, due to the way the settings are located, and the interface laid out, the app is quite well laid out.

Conclusion

In case you require identity protection and insurance, then the lookout app is the perfect choice for you.

However, you should compare the antivirus against a few others to certify its efficiency before settling, plus the free trial should serve as a great chance to take a look at the antivirus at work.