McAfee announces Internet Security, Family Protection for Mac

While malware threats for the Mac may still be limited, there are plethora of other nasty to watch out for online. That’s why McAfee has released a pair of its popular protection products for the Mac: McAfee Internet Security and McAfee Family Protection. These products permit Mac users to surf the Internet safely.
If you’re just looking to keep your own surfing habits from getting you into trouble, McAfee Internet Security can protect you from dangerous Web sites telling you if a particular online shopping site has been checked over by McAfee. It can also scan e-mail and IM attachments from Mail and iChat to make sure nobody tries to slip you a mickey while online, and can repair many files without damaging the contents.
In addition, a dedicated Secure Search tool allows you to make sure that phishing sites don’t find their way into your results; a two-way firewall keeps an eye on all the traffic entering or leaving your PC as well as locking down outside access to protect from hackers; and all the while McAfee Internet Security can scan for both Windows and Mac malware.
McAfee Internet Security runs $80 and covers one Mac for one year—after that, you’ll need to buy a new copy as there's currently no upgrade pricing available.
That’s good for your own personal Web surfing, but if you’re more worried about what your kids might be getting up to, there’s McAfee Family Protection (also available for the iPhone and iPod touch).
McAfee Family Protection covers up to three Macs for a year for $40. As with Internet Security, you’ll need to shell out for a new copy after that due to any lack of upgrade pricing at present.
These products available now and require Mac OS X 10.5 or later. They also come with a 30-day money-back guarantee and 30 days of free tech support.

Kaspersky Lab offers Threatpost app for iPhone

Threatpost, billed as Kaspersky Lab's independent, online news destination for the IT Security community, is now available to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users.
Threatpost assures the latest security news editorials, stories, podcasts and video conversations. "Business people are always on the go and may not have the opportunity to sit down and read the latest security news via traditional web sites," said Dennis Fisher, co-editor Threatpost.
Available from the Apple iTunes App Store, Threatpost is free and requires the iPhone OS 3.1.3 Software Update or later.
"This is why the Threatpost iPhone application was developed. It is a single source for all of the news and information that security professionals need to stay ahead of what’s happening in the industry. It’s our hope that with this application, we're providing a valuable service to professionals in our industry."
Available from the Apple iTunes App Store, Threatpost is free and requires the iPhone OS 3.1.3 Software Update or later.
Kaspersky Lab is the largest antivirus company, offering protection against potential threats including viruses, spyware, crimeware, hackers, phishing and spam.

McAfee New Online Family Protection for Apple iPhone

According to data released by Admob in 2010, 65 percent of iPod touch users and 13 percent of iPhone users are below the age of 17. Furthermore, twice as many kids own an Internet-enabled mobile device versus a computer1.

Today McAfee also released results from its Secret Life of Teens survey which provides a detailed snapshot of online teen behavior. It reveals that 85 percent of teens go online somewhere other than at home and under the supervision of their parents, nearly a third (32 percent) of teens say they don’t tell their parents what they do while they are online, and 28 percent engage with strangers online.

McAfee® Family Protection iPhone, iPod touch and iPad Edition offers Web site and search filtering. The program will automatically block age-inappropriate sites, such as known pornography web sites. It also includes location tracking for Apple devices that are equipped with GPS. McAfee Family Protection iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad Edition is available for download now at the iTunes App Store and McAfee.com for $19.99.

New Google Earth to see World

Google is unleashing a new version of Google Earth, version 5.2. It’s the biggest update since Earth 5.0 added the oceans and Mars in February of 2009–and while it’s not that big, it’s got one major cool new feature and one modest-but-useful one. Google gave me a sneak peek of the new version last week.

The major cool new feature is aimed at folks who like to go adventuring and take a GPS navigation handheld along. If you tote a GPS unit such as the ones from Garmin and Magellan to track a hike, bike ride, sailing trip, or any other excursion, you can shift the data to Google Earth once you’re home. In the past, doing so engaged creating thousands of points of geographic information, but the new version of the software can create simpler plots of where you were at any given point in time. And it lets you view this data as birds-eye animations that track where you went, recreated with Earth’s wealth of geographic photography and 3D imagery. You can also share the reconstructions with other Google Earth users or publish them using the embeddable version of Earth.

For now, the feature only works with data captured by standalone GPS units supported by Google Earth–it’s compatible with hundreds of models–but the idea of it tying into Google smartphone apps like Latitude and the mobile version of Google Earth itself is intriguing.

You can dress up your reconstructions by importing a vehicle model such as a bike or boat from Google’s 3D Warehouse, but this requires massaging a text file by hand, and therefore isn’t for Google Earth newbies. It would be neat if a future version of Earth made it a point-and-click process.

Virus in Windows Mobile Games

Hackers have placed viruses in video games for Windows Mobile smartphones, automatically calling premium numbers to ring up charges.

The infected games, 3D Anti-Terrorist and PDA Poker Art, are embedded with malicious code that dials premium-rate services in Somalia, Italy and other countries, racking up hundreds of dollars in charges. Victims typically don't know they've been hit until they get their wireless bills and see the surprise fees.

Microsoft investigated the problem and advised users to visit their site for instructions on how to protect their device.

A quote said by spokesman "We encourage customers to follow all of the steps of the 'Protect Your Computer' guidance of enabling a firewall, applying all software updates and installing anti-virus and anti-spyware software".

Hackers have increasingly focused on smartphones amid the surging sales of high-end devices. Earlier this month, security firm Symantec, best known for its Norton antivirus software for personal computers, announced a new family of products to protect smartphones.

McAfee Error with Faulty Antivirus Update

The Windows XP PCs were brought down all over the world due to a faulty antivirus update for which the McAfee is struggling hard to fix it before it cause more damage, however the condition is still dreadful in respect to the computer vendors.
The CTO of the security management system company Big Fix, Amrit Williams reported the USA Today that nothing will work in automating the affected computers as every process has been tried to fix it. it may take around weeks to process it as every single machine of the system would have to be individually tested and repaired as needed.
The problem occurred when the computers with Windows XP Service Pack 3 began to shut down in a minute of its starting up when the customers had downloaded the upgraded version of the McAfee’s antivirus. An undesirable affect has been witnessed on the micro blogging site Twitter.
However, only .5 % customer PCs were hit with the antivirus, but it affected largely over the small and the large business companies, also damaging the computers at the hospitals and other municipal services. However, some competitors are taking due advantage of it and rubbing the salt in the wounds.

Fake Antivirus a real security threat

According to a reach Google made few days back that fake antivirus software are causing major security threat to PC. They uses black hat SEO to rank top in search engines like Google and Yahoo.
The Google team analyzed 11,000 sites and found 240 millions of fake antivirus applications, these websites contains popup which shows virus removal or some free virus protection services results in system failure. These fake antivirus applications cause 15 % of total malware attacks on PC which is dangerous for computer as well as data.
Its Victims are typically tempted to types of sites with the scams by clicking links to them in spam messages or in “poisoned” search results. Scammers are working to move their pages to the top position of search engine results pages for keywords tied to things like celebrity foibles and big breaking news, to the point that results for “trending topics” often includes many malicious results. In fact, 60 percent of the malware Google found on sites embedding popular keywords was designed to distribute fake antivirus applications.
According to study that Google made “The attackers also use online ads to try to distribute fake security program with the help of the sites of legal Web publishers”. These fake anti-virus scams are accountable for half of total malware delivered via ads, up fivefold from a last year.
If you ever witness such these pop-ups, you should never install it as it could be fatal. Scan your computer with security application from a trusted company. Even Microsoft offers free scans through its Windows Live safety scanner.
If you did pay, monitor your credit card account or change your number, as it’s now in questionable hands and can lead to any miss-happening.