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Cell Phone Virus Threat Overblown

Posted by timothy on from the cell-phone-drivers-are-scarier dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Symantec has come under fire for claiming that 73 percent of smart phone users are aware of viruses and attacks aimed at their handsets. Wireless company WDSGlobal described this as a scaremongering tactic, with its spokesman saying: 'If you look at the viruses out there, currently there are about 14 core viruses, the majority of which are fairly benign. They are mostly developed as "proof of concept" to warn manufacturers of handsets and operating systems or the antivirus industry about potential vulnerabilities.' But Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security, believes mobile viruses and attacks shouldn't be discounted altogether, though he believes they aren't currently registering on any significant scale."

7 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. SMS Spam is worse by esconsult1 · · Score: 5, Informative
    While virii can be a little bit of a problem, I've never got any.

    What I have gotten regularly though is spam text messages. On a HTML enabled phone (Treo), the messages are sophisticated enough so that you can click through on a URL to bring up your tiny browser.

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    Newsfollow.com

    1. Re:SMS Spam is worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      FYI, the plural of virus is viruses.

  2. too many phones to write portable viruses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So many different phones. It's too hard to write anything that will run on them all. Even with write once run everywhere technology ;)

    http://www.madecollective.com/

  3. OK, let's sum it up... by mangu · · Score: 4, Funny

    Should we or shouldn't we be afraid of cellphone viruses? This is about the most confusing slashdot story I have seen in the last two hours...

  4. Well of course - by thewldisntenuff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's a large virus risk! Especially when you've got anti-virus software to sell.....

    -thewldisntenuff

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    My MythTV HowTo
  5. Awwww... by mangus_angus · · Score: 5, Funny

    I bought Cellphone AND Mac Anti-virus as a special bundle pack! Well at least I didn't waste my money on the mac protection, I mean Symantec told me I needed it...and they wouldn't lie.....right?

  6. F-Secure by TuomasK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    F-Secure tells, that you need to answer YES four time before you get infected. From F-secure's page: "So how come anybody ever gets infected by it if you have to click "Yes" so many times? Well, we've spoken to many people who've actually been infected, and they typically explain it like this: They got this weird message on the phone, requesting a "Yes" or "No" answer. So they clicked "No". But the message popped up immediatly again. And they clicked "No" - only to see the message pop up again. And since "No" didn't seem to be working, they clicked "Yes"... The message would have disappeared if they would have walked away from the area where they were (to get out of the range of the infected phone), but there's no way for an end user to know that." http://www.f-secure.fi/weblog/

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    The truth or interpretation..