Mobile security company SMobile Systems has been inspecting the Android Market and has found that not all of the apps are perfectly secure. As a matter of fact, they say that using some apps puts personal and professional data at risk. Here’s the recap of SMobile’s findings:
- 20% of applications in the Android market grant a third party application access to private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes, such as identity theft, mobile banking fraud and corporate espionage;
- 5% of applications have the ability to place a call to any number, without requiring user intervention;
- Dozens of applications have the identical type of access to sensitive information as known spyware;
- 2% of market submissions can allow an application to send unknown premium SMS messages without user intervention.
That made me think – maybe Apple knows what it’s doing with its restrictive AppStore policy.
SMobile’s press release ends with promotion of their Security Shield solution, which analyzes an entire device in seconds, and identifies and mitigates known and unknown spyware threats; while at the same time not interfering on the user experience or device performance. In addition to Android, Security Shield is also available for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm devices…
