Many smartphone offerings in the market today feature easy-to-use interfaces, user-friendly applications, minimal required setup and seemingly limitless customization. However, this ease of use can lull smartphone users into a complacent and even ignorant attitude about their smartphone’s security and safety. Most applications downloaded by users for their smartphones range from games to novelty programs to productivity suites. Few consider that many of these applications can actually be malicious software and even fewer download one of the many readily-available mobile antivirus applications, leaving their smartphones insecure.
Malicious software can be bundled into almost any “disguise” mobile application (especially games and single-purposes “novelty” apps). While application distributors such as the Android Market have extensive measures in place to prevent the distribution of these programs, some malicious applications are nonetheless downloaded by smartphone users. Most of these rogue pieces of software cause no discernible problems with the smartphone, but beneath their often benevolent exteriors, they are compromising security. Some more benign smartphone viruses might simply spy on your location via the phone’s GPS capabilities and on your keyword usage, for the purpose of distributing audience-targeted spam emails or text messages. Others can compromise a smartphone’s security in more sinister ways, gathering and reporting email contents, credit card information, and call statistics. However some others destroy important information.
However, there is a better way to protect your smartphones. Besides downloading only credible and tested apps, a mobile antivirus program can also serve to highly reduce your risk of a security breach by malicious mobile software. Most antivirus apps will present a wide array of features. Perhaps most important and most common is a scan feature which reads and checks all files on the smartphone’s operating system against a database of known malicious software. Once viruses and other unwanted programs are detected, the antivirus application facilitates their deletion and removal, often “quarantining” them to prevent accidental activation or damage as they are removed. Other mobile antivirus application features might include a “real-time protection” module which actively monitors file downloads and stops unauthorized operations, options to remotely “wipe” the device in case of physical theft, and a browser module which checks email and internet links against a database of known malicious sites.
Some popular mobile antivirus programs include AVG Antivirus for Android, Webroot Security and Antivirus (Andriod Market), and VirusBarrier iOS (the App Store).
==== About the Author =====
Sapna Rawat is an SEO for taaza.com, which is a muti-dimensional Indian portal operating in verticals like Education, travel, News, Classifieds, Jobs and finance.
