Dan Graziano:
Over the three-month period, the company found more than 14,900 new malicious programs targeting the platform. Nearly half of the malicious files were classified as multi-functional Trojans that were programmed to steal data from smartphones and could also download and install programs from remote servers.
There is a much better alternative you know.
So says the company striving to get you as a customer. 😀
Although I depise Android as much as any sane developer, I’d like to point out that Kapersky’s stats about Android malware are severely flawed:
They create a new hash value for every even only slightly changed source code footprint, thus exaggerating the relevant number of malware instances.
Other antivirus companies are counting malware instances in a more sensible approach, analyzing and aggregating instances by taking into account subtle code changes.
With that method of counting, you get only a “modest” increase of about 30-40% and no tripling. But still.
To all Android fans (none of which, I’m sure, are reading this) promoting the virtues of “Open” and “Customizable”, I say “Be careful what you wish for”.
The OS being open and customizable doesn’t have anything to do with it. If they walled the Play store, this wouldn’t be an issue. Most users don’t know what side loading means or what to do if they were presented with an APK.
Most Android fans I know dislike Apple because they don’t want another company telling them what programs they can and can’t run. A walled Play store would mean Google doing the same thing. Sure there are alternative stores if you know where to look, but largely these people want the convenience of going to one place without the “disadvantage” of that place being curated.
Yes. My point still stands though. An open OS isn’t the cause of this. An open market to buy apps without curation is the cause, if it is legit (which I doubt).
Fair enough. The Android fans I know don’t separate the two concepts, but you’re right that they are indeed separate.