Although this may not sound particularly ‘scary’ McAfee thought that it was enough of an issue to sound the alarm about these fake programs. Possibly because they may be costing them money by taking away subscribers, or maybe they are generally concerned, I guess we will never really know.

A statistic released by Datamation, that details a McAfee labs report, which revealed that as many as 1 million people are being targeted by scareware every day, is a pertinent one, revealing exactly why McAfee are so concerned.

They were so concerned in actual fact that that they have decided this week to launch a consumer threat alert program that will provide a blog and e-mail subscription service to do the honourable job of keeping consumers clued up on all the latest online scams going around the internet, for a small fee… Surely if they are so concerned it should be a free service?

McAfee claim that internet users are scammed out of roughly $300 million a year by these programs that prey on the naiveté and lack of confidence of many internet users. They present them with what usually does look a perfectly legitimate warning that their system may be under threat and that they risk losing all data, the user will then be prompted to purchase some rogue software that will do nothing but cost them money and on occasion spread a virus through their system.

So it seems McAfee are doing a good thing by issuing a warning about these threats as many people do not realise the dangers and costliness of these scareware programs. However, it would seem fairly beneficial to McAfee at the same time, as they can now offer another paid subscription service just to inform people of dangerous content whilst re assuring them that they are the best program to use to keep your computer safe, fair enough.

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In addition to this special offer there will also be educational materials and custom security applications and software available through the Facebook interface. According to McAfee, Facebook will take no share of the subscriptions and are doing this purely to improve the security of Facebook users’ computers and online experiences in general.

“Facebook is applying all financial incentives from this partnership to the benefit of its users and will not be taking a share of any revenue from user subscriptions,” – McAfee press release.

The benefits of the partnership will initially only be available to users in the U.S., Mexico, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Brazil, the UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, and France, though more countries are expected to be added to that list in the coming months.

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