Rating: Android handsets most at risk, apparently
Going on the basis that every picture paints or is worth a thousand words, then mobile security expert, Bullguard has decided to produce a mini-guide to mobile malware in a graphical format. Actually, the company describes the guide as an ‘info-graphic’. Obviously, most mobile handset users have a low concentration threshold so an illustration with loads of funky characters in it stands a better chance of grabbing some attention. And if the graphic is to be believed there’s a great deal of consumer education to be done. For starters, those most vulnerable smartphone users are those armed with Android OS handsets. Apparently, malware aimed at Android handsets has grown by 400 per cent in the six months between June 201 and January 2011. Even owners of Windows Mobile and Symbian handsets aren’t safe because they’ve been around so long they have become easy targets.The statistics from Bullguard’s guide, ‘Mobile Malware: – The Growing Threat of Smartphone Hackers & What You Need to Know’, which impressed GoMo News the most is that 53 per cent of users say that they are unaware of security software for smartphones.
Yet 24 per cent of smartphone users carry out mobile banking from Smartphones without any protective measures in place.
The guide outlines multiple milestones in the history of mobile malware. According to Bullguard, the first bank-phishing app was discovered hidden away on an official app store back in 2010.
Plus the incentive to create mobile malware is enormous for those living outside the affluent mobile markets.For example, 35 per cent of all US adults own a smartphone.
If you discount the young and impoverished from this equation, it means that hackers have the potential to target over 50 per cent of the US population. That’s an impressive market.
This infographic will benefit all of those in the mobile security app market – not just Bullguard. Our own gripe, however, is that most of the stats in the guide aren’t properly indexed.
Bullguard says at the bottom of the graphic that it is using stats garnered from six sources (including itself).
Pity it didn’t bury the appropriate URLs for this information into the guard via 2D barcodes. The graphic is displayed in its full glory below.
Courtesy of: BullGuard.com
More information from here.
