Understanding the alert types

Protection alerts are an important part of your McAfee security; they provide immediate notification of critical and non-critical security events as soon as they occur on your PC. You can differentiate between a critical and non-critical security event by the color of alert that appears (for example a red alert is critical and a gray alert is non-critical). Review the protection alert descriptions to understand the kinds of security events that are associated with each of the alerts. To learn more about informational alerts, read Showing or hiding informational alerts.

Protection Alert Type	Description
Red	A red alert is a critical notification that requires you to respond and resolve the issue. Some red alerts correspond to the "at risk" protection status on the Home Page. After you fix the problem, the protection status returns to "secure." For example, if your subscription expires, the protection status turns to "at risk" and you receive a red alert to notify you that it is time to renew. After you renew your subscription, the protection status is "secure."
Yellow	A yellow alert is a notification of an event that might affect your protection status.
Gray	A gray alert, also known as an informational alert, is a non-critical notification to convey information regarding security related events. Gray alerts usually close automatically after a few seconds. For more information, read Showing or hiding informational alerts.