Facebook selected McAfee by a competitive process, and the software will be available to Facebook users in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. McAfee says that additional countries will be added in the near future.
Under the terms of the partnership, McAfee is Facebook's exclusive provider of consumer security software, and Facebook users will be eligible for a complimentary six-month subscription of the McAfee Internet Security Suite software. Following the six-month period, Facebook users will be eligible for special discount subscription pricing.
In order to take advantage of the offer, head to this address and become a fan to become eligible for the trial software.
Facebook will not be taking a share of any revenue from user subscriptions.
Protection from Facebook hacking
In addition to offering Internet Security software trial subscriptions, McAfee's custom Scan and Repair tool will quarantine and delete malicious files, in the rare event a Facebook account is compromised.
Facebook requires users to take steps to re-secure their Facebook account and learn security best practices. McAfee's custom technology will clean users' computers as part of the process of re-securing the account, to ensure that any malicious software that might have compromised the account is no longer present. There is no charge for use of this tool.
How to take up the trial
Important Note: McAfee will take your credit card details when you register for the 6 month trial, and automatically renew your subscription - debiting your credit card - unless you cancel the automatic renewal before the end of the trial.
The Australian landing page for the offer had only a US number to arrange cancellation of autorenewal when we checked, but a McAfee spokesperson told us that Australian subscribers can cancel autorenewal by contacting the McAfee support line on 1800 998 887.
The download process also said that we could turn autorenewal off in our account settings, but at the time we posted this story, we were unable to turn off the autorenewal. Instead, that section of our account said that we had no products eligible to use autorenewal.
- Go to http://www.facebook.com/mcafee
- Click "become a fan" (you must be logged into Facebook)
- Under the Protect your PC tab, select your country from the drop down list. You will be directed to the Country landing page.
- Enter the details required (name, email, password) and continue through the privacy policy - agree to it in order to proceed.
- Register for the six month trial by entering your address and credit card details. You can then download the trial.
- Agree to the End User License agreement, then download the software.
- Before installing the software, ensure that you remove any antivirus software already running on your computer.
- After you enter credit card details, you can log into your account at any time using the username and password you set up. My Auto-renewal Settings are on the left hand side of the page.
- Facebook users taking up the trial get 30% discount on the price of renewal (about $70 for one year subscription).