AVG today announced its Family Safety mobile browser 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 which 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 app is ideally suited for use in the Windows Phone 8 Kid’s Corner, which 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 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."

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.

AVG Family Safety for Windows Phone 8 is free and can be found in the Windows Phone Store here.