So much of our personal and professional lives takes place online. It can make things a lot easier, but it also comes with security risks. We hate to hear stories of scammers using texts, emails and videos to target people and, with the rise of AI, the tactics that are being employed are increasingly convincing. That's why we were pleased to hear about Scam Detector – a new feature from award-winning anti-virus company McAfee.
This software heads off the danger by spotting the scams before they have a chance to get into your private info. It’s also equipped to deal with modern types of scam tactics like deepfake videos. Even if you think that you're careful when it comes to security, and are conscious about how criminals operate, you'd be surprised by how convincing deepfakes can be. We've been caught out when trying to choose between a real recording and a deepfake one, and we know that the technology used is rapidly evolving and improving.
Scam Detector steps in to help by beating the scammers at their own game, using AI-powered tech to spot the things that we might miss. Once set up, it gets to work, detecting scam content and alerting you to its presence. Not only that, but it explains why identified scams are dangerous – giving you extra tools to help recognise potentially unsafe content.
For emails, link it to your Gmail or Outlook account (it supports up to ten inboxes per user across Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo Mail). Text and video scam protection comes via easy activation in the McAfee mobile app on Android or iOS. It then gets to work automatically with simple notifications highlighting anything suspicious.
By downloading McAfee Total Protection (Scam Detector comes included, as it does with McAfee+ and all McAfee core plans) we were able to run scans of our computer to check for anything that shouldn't be there. The anti-virus software identifies threats and safely places them in quarantine. It also conducts real-time scanning so that checks for viruses and spyware happen immediately, whenever a file is accessed.
The McAfee WebAdvisor (an extension which works within your internet browser to protect you from malware and phishing attempts) and a secure VPN (an additional means of ensuring private internet browsing) are further elements in the McAfee anti-virus arsenal.
Taken as a whole, this is a means to ward off hackers and threats, and to prevent identity theft. With the addition of Scam Detector, we're presented with an anti-virus package which goes one step further in its level of protection, reflecting the sophisticated methods used by those who don't have our best interests at heart.
We appreciate a new way to stop swindlers stealing our money and personal info. A deepfake identifier like Scam Detector is the obvious answer when faced with ever more fake, but incredibly realistic, content.
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