They’re at it again.
For years consumers have lifted up iOS as the safe mobile operating system. Comparatively, it does see much less malware than Android likely due to its rigorous manual testing of App Store apps and technological limitations that only allow approved apps on iOS devices. But to believe you’re 100 percent in the clear if you’re using an iOS device is a mistake.
This comes straight from an antivirus peddler – the people who spread lies and FUD non-stop to scare unsuspecting users into buying their useless, crappy, resource-hogging bloated software. For every person here on OSNews who see through these companies’ lies, there’s a dozen regular users falling for their scams.
Now, it’s iOS’ turn apparently. I will continue to hammer on this issue until the cows come home. Whether you’re using iOS or Android, you do not need antivirus software.
It’s free, and it’s built into everybody if they would only choose to use it. It’s called your brain, and good old common sense.
What if the malware is disguised as a legitimate app and slipped through Apple’s cracks? What kind of common sense would help to see through that?
Edited 2015-03-07 04:01 UTC
Thats easy, as long as the malware is unknown, neither google and apple, nor the antivirus will find it, as soon as it gets known, apple and google will remove it from the store and most likely from your device as well. While this depends on the level of malicity, it is most likely that you are in the same level of danger with or without an antivirus software. In my opinion not worth the resources you spend.
Edited 2015-03-07 06:06 UTC
The kind of common sense that says “hmm, why would this supposed music player want my contacts?” Example of course, but with iOS now asking for a good number of permissions when apps try to access items such as contacts, microphone, and camera, it’s easier to spot these apps. Better than Android IMHO where it’s accept all or take a hike. In any case, wondering why for example a wordprocessor needs access to your camera if you didn’t initiate a document scanning operation should trip anyone’s common sense filter.
Hum… Maybe I misunderstood you, but it’s perfectly possible, in Android, to make settings that allow to approve or reject specific permissions per application.
System Parameter –> Security –> App Permissions
Some apps are not legitimate, regardless of what app stores they are in.
But, yeah, common sense won’t protect you from all viruses/malware attacks. Something like any of the SSL/TLS vulnerabilities and/or superfish, combined with a zero day … you could be compromised simply by trying to go to any web site out there, or even by your phone performing requests in the back ground.
No amount of common sense will defend you from that.
But yeah personally, I don’t run antivirus on ios/android. I feel I have adequate protections against the simplest threats, and additional protections that antivirus might bring don’t bring much additional value for me.
To sum up: the threat is small, and the antivirus … not very good.
I will continue to hammer on this issue until the cows come home. Whether you’re using iOS or Android, you do not need antivirus software.
iOS I agree with you on as the closed App Store makes non-jailbroken phones pretty hard to attack, although I do note that design flaws elsewhere do make malware possible (e.g. see http://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-reveal-how-to-hack-an-ipho…). In addition, the strict lack of system privileges for apps make impossible for any “antivirus” software to work properly anyway (this goes for Windows Phone too).
For Android I have a slightly more nuanced view. Ordinary users probably don’t need anything, but if you’ve rooted your phone and/or are using a non Google Play / Amazon app store, then your risk goes up quite a bit (http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/03/24/report-97-of-mob…) and using some sort of basic, free antivirus software like AVG seems to be a reasonable thing to do.
Edited 2015-03-07 08:22 UTC
It’s that same strict level of non-system privileges that keeps most malware and viruses from having any effect on iOS and OS X as well. Jailbreaking does away with that layer of protection, no matter what OS you are using, which is why I don’t do it any more. Having peace of mind is worth the minor inconvenience of not being able to customize my user interface or anything else that can be done after jailbreaking.
It has always been like that since the early days of home computing.
The people most likely to suffer from virus are the ones dealing with pirated software.
Really
Right now I think Pirate Bay is a more trustworthy source of software than, say, downloading free stuff off download.com.
Well, there are two different things “for this OS you don’t need to run AV software” and “just because you don’t run Windows you don’t have to worry about malware”.
Yes, not using Windows makes you more secure, but that does not means you can be careless.
I doubt Apple will let AV peddlers put AV software in their app store, considering how much of their marketing revolves around the fact iOS are uber-secure devices that are trouble free.
Edited 2015-03-07 10:16 UTC
That’s part of it, though I have no doubt that Apple & their fanbois could just “Ministry of Truth” that detail away… Remember how x86 processors were hopelessly inferior to PPC, the Photshop “bake-offs” that iFanboys would breathlessly tout (“faster in some arcane, seldom used operation… but only on the first full moon of April in a leap year, while read the Necronomicon backwards in a mirror…”). And then the way that all magically changed when Apple jumped on the Intel bandwagon?
The main thing keeping AV off iOS is the fact that AV software would need lower-level access to the OS than Apple would ever allow for third parties. Because that would undermine Apple’s “throw out the baby with the bath water” approach to addressing any technical issues with iOS: instead of trying find a reasonable balance between capability and security, Apple’s decision was to throw capability under the bus & limit all third-party applications to being little more than glorified, heavily-restricted plugins.
If Apple clings to that approach so stubbornly that they can’t be bothered to make exceptions even for genuinely useful things like remote support software, then what chance does AV software have?
Almost all mobile apps are freaking malware.
Seriously, look up the definition of malware.
“‘Malware’ is an umbrella term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive software,[3] including computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, scareware, and other malicious programs.”
Any of those ‘ad supported’ apps out there. Yup, Malware. Any of those apps that like to run in the background and randomly irritate you to play them? Malware. I can’t recall any particular app, since they seem to all do this, but for example, why does a wifi scanning program need access to your pictures, your files and your contact list?
Besides, I actually did manage to have avast catch something on my phone, when I accidentally clicked on a web link in an email. Which by the way is easy to do since your whole entire screen is an input device.
Consider the performance of the average AV suite you could hide bitcoin mining software in one and I doubt most people would suspect anything.
On every mobile platform, sandboxing makes traditional AV entirely useless. Apps simply can’t access the code and data for other apps, so “virus scanning” will be limited to the AV itself (useless) and the public storage areas (less useless if your OS lets you install downloaded apps from anywhere).
Where “AV” tech would be more useful is if it can hook into things like URL handling; something tries to send you to a sketchy URL? Get a warning.
Another technique that’s useful is to hook the on-device installer, and provide an app reputation check at install time. Again, only useful if your device can load apps from “anywhere”… BlackBerry devices running 10.3.0 or later (so Passport and anything released after that) do this when installing Android apps.
Disclaimer: I work at BlackBerry but I don’t speak for them. Also, I designed and implemented the cloud service behind BB10’s app reputation checking (BlackBerry Guardian).
If you have a vanilla android or a non jailbroken iOS then absolutely, but I’d say that certain flavored android push a lot of adware and proprietary crap that can’t be removed or disabled and could put you at risk.
I’m all for it if the antivirus companies take care of those for people who want to keep manufacturer optimizations yet get rid of crapware
Anti-virus vendor whipping up hysteria – colour me unsurprised given that their whole survival depends on scaring the crap out of unsuspecting consumers and clueless executives so that they run straight to their very organisations that promise salvation from all the nasty’s in the world.