Do you need antivirus software for your android device? Here are some scary facts…
Android is the most widely-used operating system in the world. It’s the most popular because of the awesome choice, fantastic features and great value for money, but with this popularity comes an ever increasing interest by hackers and developers of malware, viruses and other nasties.
A catalog of malicious apps managed to make it through Google’s security checkpoint in 2019.
In September alone, researchers uncovered a total of 172 infected apps on the Play Store. The worst part? These apps had racked up over 335 million installs by the time they were detected by security experts.
The apps pretended to be legitimate services including games, utilities, photography software, and photo galleries.
The Android.Joker family was found to be embedded in Android utilities, camera plug-ins, and image editors, among other software. Joker contains some of the typical functionality of a Trojan, including the installation of a backdoor to maintain persistence, the theft of sensitive handset and user data, and a particular proclivity towards stealing financial information.
Another sample of note was the Android.Banker.352.origin banking Trojan, found within the YoBit cryptocurrency exchange app. When launched, the malware displays a fake authentication message within a window, asking users to input their credentials.
Other malware samples harvested from Google Play include adware from the Android.HiddenAds family, mainly hidden within games and other software. After launch, the adware buries its icon and displays advertising banners, and may also attempt to download and install APK files.
It is believed up to 800,000 Android users have been impacted and data including names, handset information, and locations may have been stolen.
In addition thousands of retail websites, including the official Sesame Street store, may have been hijacked by credit-card thieves who hacked into the servers of Volusion, a back-end online retail service. If you’ve bought something from a smaller online retailer — i.e. not Amazon, BestBuy or Walmart — in the past couple of months, check your credit-card statements.
Many not-so-old Android phones, including the Samsung Galaxy S7 through S9 and the Google Pixel, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2XL, are vulnerable to targeted attacks that could combine with malicious apps to give hackers full control.
If you don’t want to become a victim of cyber crime, having the best security apps installed on your devices is becoming absolutely essential.
How We Tested
To gauge security protection, we used the latest assessment results from AV-TEST, the leading independent antivirus testing lab from Germany which rates major android security apps every two months, based on the tested software’s ability to detect zero-day malware and other new security threats. To get a nice overview of the test results, we looked at the past year’s worth of AV-TEST results and created aggregate scores.
We also researched the features of each app in depth, evaluated their usefulness and assessed such factors as user friendliness, interface, installation process and effect on system performance.
Security features worth paying for
There are more and more reports of spyware, malware and adware being spread via Google’s Play Store. The best mobile antivirus apps offer both detection and prevention to make sure you do not get infected. In addition, the best mobile antivirus apps also offer a range of privacy and anti-theft features. These include the ability to back up your contacts and photos, track your phone or tablet via GPS, snap a picture of a phone thief with the device’s camera, send commands to a lost or stolen phone via text messages and even use your Android Wear smartwatch to locate your phone.Disclaimer
Disclaimer: Top10Antivirus.Feedback is a free service. We receive commissions from the antivirus companies we recommend on this page if you click our links and make a purchase. We try to keep the info on this site as up to date and fresh as possible, but cannot guarantee that this will always be the case.
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Ranked #1 Antivirus of 2020
