With the advent of in-your-hands technology hitting a pinnacle with smartphones like the iPhone and Droid models of phones, a major concern for the technology community is stopping the flow of malware and viruses from affecting these devices. In fact, as I have previous mentioned, a number of sources have named smartphone malware as one of the major destructive tech trends in 2011. However, a new article in PC Magazine says that mobile malware may not be a major problem at all.

The article says that mobile malware is on the rise, as many indicators have shown they would be and that the statistics are staggering:

“Smartphones and tablets may be the hottest tickets in electronics today, but with that marquee status comes a dark side. Mobile viruses on the rise, and 2010 saw a huge increase in malware on mobile devices, up 46 percent from 2009, says a new threat report from security software maker McAfee.

The increase in mobile malware isn’t unexpected, as smartphones have become more popular in the last year, with smartphones recently passing PCs in sales for the first time ever. Adam Wosotowsky, an engineer at McAfee, says Symbian is the most at-risk mobile platform, though Google Android devices and jailbroken iPhones are popular targets, too.”

Although these are indicators that you may want to lock your smartphone in a data protected safe, mobile malware just isn’t as pervasive as the kinds of viruses that can bring your PC to a screeching halt.

“Seeing “indications” and seeing a virus are two different things, however. Ondrej Vlcek, CTO of Avast, a security software company that gives away its product, says the mobile malware threat, while a problem, isn’t anywhere near as threatening as malware on PCs.

“It’s still relatively small compared to the traditional platforms,” Vlcek says. “Also, the payloads are usually less invasive—sort of like Windows malware ten, fifteen years ago.”
Just be sure that your smartphone is properly protected in case you are confronted with malware or viruses. You can never be too safe when it comes to virus protection.”