It depends on your definition of scam. Is McAfee a total fraud, not delivering on its core functionality of anti-virus scanning? No. But it's selling something most people don't need and uses information asymmetry, fear, and dark patterns to make money. Microsoft Defender has solved the anti-virus problem. (It doesn't solve the computer security problem but that's out of scope of AV). To play devil's advocate, without bundled bloatware PCs might cost $10 more.