We kind of knew this day would come, the day when, like our computers, our mobile phones aren’t safe from the havoc of viruses. While mobile phone viruses aren’t exactly new, they are just now starting to pick up serious steam. According to Judy Motti of InternetNews.com, wireless carriers are seeing a far greater number of viruses this year than even last year. This includes on carrier seeing virus rates go from .05 percent last year to six percent this year, and another doubling the number of viruses it cleans off the network daily, from 50,000 to 100,000.
How can the average consumer protect him or herself from such malicious program? Not much, really. The onus is more on the carriers, which have security tools they can use over the entire network. Plus, given the nature of viruses, a single consumer might not be able to do much. Mobile phone viruses spread out like a network, so while stopping it at one node will cut it off at that point, it will still flow from other nodes.
What do these programs look for? Like Internet scams, they’re looking for your financial information. It’s best to be absolutely sure that you’re on a secured site if you enter any of this information into your mobile phone. They’re also looking for contact information, with which to begin premium text messaging scams. So one of the keys is to search for an extra-large text messaging bill.
The most vulnerable phones are those which run on the Symbian operating system. Open source platforms in general present the biggest security threat. So does this mean we’ll see a high level of malicious activity once Android rolls out? Simon Coney, vice president of strategic development for AdaptiveMobile, seems to think so:
“Yet it’s not a matter of deficiency for Symbian as much as it is for open systems. It’s just the nature of virus writers to exploit where it’s easiest,” he said.
He also thinks we’ll see this on popular platforms like the iPhone soon enough.
So it appears operators and carriers have a large task on their hands. Either offer your customers top-notch protection against malicious software, or risk losing them to competitors who will.
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