Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Phone Gets Virus Protection
wan-fu writes "After all that talk about bluetooth vulnerabilities
and mobile phone virii there will finally be a mobile phone with virus protection. Nokia's 6670 smart phone will be released in October and features software from F-Secure. Perhaps this will raise the eyebrows of some other mobile phone manufacturers to step up and increase their security policies for their phones' operating systems."
>Why not just make a phone that is secure in the first place and
>can't get viruses. This has to be the worst marketing ploy ever.
Because people want more and more features. Series 60 phones from nokia can run user-installed programs, and we all know what happens when you mix ease of installation (browse to a WAP/web page) and clueless users.
Still, the right aproach would be educating users and using some kind of sandbox model:
"pr0napplet wants to make a phone call"
[Allow] [Deny] [Always] [Never]
But I completely agree that bundling snakeoil is NOT the way to go. Moving the antivirus arms race to mobile phones will only hurt the phone market in the long run: when your PC gets 0wned, most of the time you just lose the use of your bandwidth: the spam you send does not immediately hurt you. Should your phone get 0wned, you'll probaly run a service bill in the thousands of dollars (or euros). Once word gets out, some people will be too scared to use a smartphone.