The National Crime Prevention Council, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME), a special interest group of the CMO Council, have launched a campaign to focus public awareness on cyber crime.

The campaign will feature McGruff the Crime Dog, who will urge consumers to "Take a Bite Out of Cyber Crime." The campaign will focus on alerting online media users to the hazards of computer viruses, worms, spam, spyware, phishing, identity theft and online predators.

The public awareness effort will focus on driving consumers to a Web site (www.bytecrime.org) founded and supported by a host of private sector marketers and media companies.

The campaign will also:

* Develop an extensive public service announcement campaign related to cyber security and safety that will reach a wide audience via print, online, radio and TV

* Distribute 500,000 educational booklets through digital downloads and other channels

* Train 20,000 elementary and middle school students at 5,000 schools and hundreds of boys and girls clubs

* Mobilize leading basketball, ice hockey and soccer sports franchises to mount "Guard Your HomeNet with McGruff" programs

* Leverage National Crime Prevention and Computer Learning month with widely publicized McGruff visits to a broad range of events, including the Digital Life exposition at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York in October

"Information security has gone beyond warding off annoying spam and hacker intrusions -- it's now about protecting our identities, and our finances, from thieves that exist specifically to commit cyber crime," said NCPC president and CEO Alfonso E. Lenhard, in a statement. "We look forward to contributing our expertise and our prevention icon, McGruff, in the fight to protect adults and children from cyber crime."

"We're excited about the impact and potential of this coalition campaign to bring McGruff to the cyber crime scenes of America," added Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. "McGruff is a legendary character with enduring appeal and credibility. The media, sports franchise, education, crime prevention and private sector partners involved in this initiative have formidable reach and access to audiences at risk to having their digital lives compromised. As a result, we expect to put more bite into the fight against cyber crime in the months ahead."