McAfee’s new family shield
On the heels of Symantec’s OnlineFamily.Norton released earlier this year, security stalwart McAfee jumps into the family protection game with a new home-oriented protection program. Called McAfee Family Protection, the program offers many familiar tools to parents in the hopes of fostering conversation while protecting children from harm.
McAfee Family Protection offers blocking, monitoring, and parental notifications for most computer-based activities. The program allows for up to 10 users on three different machines, utilizing several layers of algorithms to monitor behavior. Parents can outright block or merely monitor Web sites, social-networking behavior, and instant messaging including Facebook IM and multi-protocol chat clients, according to Javed Hasan, vice president of McAfee Product Management.
In addition to blanket blocks for subject matter and specific Web site blocks, parents can customize rules so that they can block all of YouTube, or just YouTube videos that have specific tags. Web sites protected by secure protocol, https, can also be blocked. They can also set up roadblocks that prevent specific applications from opening, such as peer-to-peer clients or media players, and parents can receive brief SMS notifications alongside more detailed e-mail reports.
