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AVG Technologies Brings Family Safety to Windows Phone 8 Devices

AVG Technologies N.V. (NYSE: AVG), the provider of Internet and mobile security, privacy and optimization to 146 million active users, has announced that its AVG Family Safety mobile application is now available for Microsoft Windows® Phone 8 devices.

Aimed at protecting children while they surf the web on mobile devices, AVG Family Safety is a free, secure, mobile web browser, previously only available for Apple devices and Windows Phone 7.5. Adding to the existing built-in mobile security already provided by Microsoft, the application uses data from AVG’s Linkscanner® technology to block websites that are known to be malicious, and its own filters will also prevent visits to any sites that are deemed to contain mature and inappropriate content such as anything relating to violence, drugs or pornography.

The latest version of AVG Family Safety is ideally suited for use in the Windows Phone 8 Kid’s Corner. This newly introduced feature allows parents to set up an area on their smartphones where children can play with pre-added games, apps, music and videos, but can’t access the content or applications on the rest of the device. Adding AVG Family Safety as the default browser on this section is an easy and great way for parents to open up the Internet to their children but within a safe environment.

“Parents today know only too well the fascination that smartphones hold for children. I am sure that we’ve all been guilty in the past of handing over our device, with our only concern being about its safety rather than the safety of our children using it,” said Tony Anscombe, AVG’s Senior Security Evangelist. “But are we stopping to consider the type of content we could be exposing our children to? As our previous research has shown, the digital literacy of children nowadays is astounding so while it is absolutely important to nurture this, and allow our children to experience the online world, it has to be in a controlled way. AVG Family Safety gives parents that peace of mind.”

As part of its Digital Diaries research series, AVG discovered that more than twice the number of children aged 2-5 years could play with a smartphone application (26 per cent) versus tying their shoelaces (11 per cent). The research, entitled Digital Skills, also showed that more children can open a web browser (29 per cent) than swim unaided (17 per cent).

For further family protection, users who already have an AVG Family Safety account for their home computer can combine this with their Windows Phone 8 application to access even more security features. These include easily customizable lists of allowed and blocked sites, as well as the ability to block social networking sites per mobile device.

To download the AVG Family Safety for Windows Phone 8 application directly please visit – http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=1df94db9-d1b4-4a6a-942e-4e04c97fb32c