AVG Gives Away Family Safety With 99-Cent Donation to Red Cross

is a re-branded version of published by Czech security vendor AVG and shares the Editors' Choice honor for with Bsecure. At its initial release in April it was already a bargain. For $19.95, parents got exactly the same protection found in the $49.95 Bsecure product. Today, the company announced that during the month of June they're giving the product away for free with a 99-cent donation to support the American Red Cross family relief efforts in Joplin, Mo.

Parents can install the software on up to three computers and manage profiles for the kids across all of the family's computers. AVG Family Safety can block access to inappropriate websites in over 60 categories, filter access to games and videos based on ratings, and schedule each child's use of the Internet on a weekly basis. If desired, parents can use it to capture children's social networking login credentials. It will record Web activity, search terms used, and instant messaging conversations. And its unique Whole Network option extends parental control to all devices within the home network, including smartphones and game consoles.

Free Children's Book
JR Smith, AVG's CEO, feels the proper approach to cybersecurity for kids involves starting as early as possible. To that end the company has also released a book for young children that teaches simple lessons about what's good and what's bad when using the computer. Little Bird's Internet Security Adventure is now available for download as a PDF file and will soon be released in app form for Kindle, iPad, and desktop.

Digital Diaries
Today also marks the third phase of AVG's "Digital Diaries" study on children and the Internet. The first phase, revealed that 81 percent of children under two have an online presence such as an email address or social networking page. A quarter had a sonogram posted before they were even born.

Phase two of the survey, Digital Skills, included more surprising news. AVG determined that more children in the two to five age range know how to play a computer game (58 percent) than know how to swim (20 percent) or ride a bike (52 percent), and that 69 percent of these children can operate a computer mouse but only 11 percent can tie their own shoes.

The current survey, Digital Playground, surveyed parents of children from six to nine years old, specifically parents who have computers in the house. About one in five of the children use email, and despite their age, 14 percent are among the . If you count kid-specific social networks like Club Penguin or Webkinz, over half the kids are on social networking.

Despite having an overall awareness of their children's computer use, 58 percent of parents admitted they did not understand their children's online social networks. Only 56 percent were sure they had parental controls in place. View the full report on AVG's website.