McAfee launches a new security experience to tackle AI-powered scams

Generative AI is making online scams easier to create and harder to recognize, and McAfee is responding with a redesigned security experience that tries to catch risks before you have to figure them out yourself. The new McAfee is available today in the US, and it combines protection for your personal information, finances, connections, and devices across platforms.

What does the new McAfee experience do differently?

McAfee is moving beyond the antivirus software many people still associate with its name. The new experience combines protection for your data, identity, and threat protection across your devices, especially as AI creates new ways for scammers to exploit personal information such as holiday photos.

Instead of making you hunt through settings, it can proactively surface personalized alerts when something needs attention. It then explains the problem and suggests what you should do next in plain language.

These protections work across your devices as one connected system. McAfee gives the example of its VPN switching on when you connect to public Wi-Fi, without requiring you to enable it manually.

It can also scan your messages and emails to flag potential scams and risky texts, while helping you remove the suspicious messages. The service can also flag potentially suspicious transactions and extend protection to devices used by your family members.

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Why is McAfee changing its approach now?

McAfee says that investment and cryptocurrency scams were the most common text-based scam in 47 of 50 states. Meanwhile, 53% of victims who lost money to scams recovered none of it.

Fear of scams is also changing how people behave online. McAfee found that 37% of Americans have ignored legitimate communications because they feared scams, while 25% abandoned an online purchase.

McAfee’s pitch is essentially that you shouldn’t need to become a security expert just because scammers have better tools. Its new experience aims to handle more of that work automatically.