With proper circulation, the Android smartphone can do without antivirus.
Malicious programs for Android have different degrees of danger. Some of them are relatively harmless and are mostly unpleasant: they reflect advertising banners, occupy RAM and discharge the battery. Others are much causar: they block the contents of the memory, require redemption, open remote access to the device.
How to secure Android from viruses? Most users will say that for this you need to install an anti-virus program on your smartphone. It will perform scanning (as on a computer), and in case of danger, immediately reports about the problem found.
Many mobile Antiviruses were developed by the same companies as protective products for PCs and laptops. We decided to find out if there are a real necessity.
How do antiviruses for Android work?
To understand how much Android needs additional protection, you need to understand a little about how mobile antiviruses function. It is quite simple.
In 2019, experts from AV Comparatives studied popular antivirus solutions for Android. Their findings confirmed everything about digital security experts suspected for a long time: many protective programs for smartphones do not even try to look for malicious activity.
All their activities are to compare the installed applications with a white list. Each program not included in such a list is marked as potentially dangerous. And that's it.
More complex solutions include a black list. They check if a device is present on the device from the register of threats. If such is revealed, it is recommended to remove it.
At first glance, such functionality seems sufficient, but from the practical point of view there is no sense from it. Lists that are activated when scanning lose informativeness with catastrophic speed: new viruses appear every day, so any predetermined list of threats can be attributed to obsolete measures.
According to the information from the Statista website for March 2020, about 482,579 samples of malicious software for Android fall per month. In terms of day, this is an average of 16,000 malicious programs - too much the quantity so that it can be quickly identified and contributed to the registry.
Fresh threats remain invisible even for advanced antiviruses.
How can antivirus harm Android?
The false sense of security is not a major cause for concern. A more serious trouble is related to performance of the device. Anti-virus applications require many system resources, as a result of which the response of the Operations may noticeably deteriorate.
All antiviruses have individual system requirements. Especially "heavy" load the smartphone to such an extent that it becomes impossible to use it.
Not only is the performance decreases, so the battery charge is consumed intensively. Animation, background work, real-time protection modules - all this is somehow eating the battery.
Another trouble is false responses. Often, mobile antiviruses take quite harmless processes for malicious and all forces block their work to "protect the user".
A special threat is carried antiviral solutions from little-known companies and developers who have long forgotten about supporting their product: dozens of "holes" can be present in them, through which your device risks being contaminated.
But the worst of all when an antivirus on a smartphone or a tablet gets an initially dangerous program. By providing it with full access to the system, the user itself also puts the cross on the protection of his device.
Oils in the fire poured antivirus creators
According to Statista, Android is 73% of the mobile market. This is many times more than IOS. Naturally, such a wide coverage cannot remain unnoticed for malware developers: not passes and month without news about new dangers for Android.
Journalists quite accurately describe the functionality and consequences from infection with these programs. That often exaggerated is the risk of infection. The users of antivirus applications themselves are frightening the most strongest: if you believe the word for the word, then the world is about to collapse under the onslaught of mobile harmors.
Provided that the Android security system is regularly updated, the probability of catching the danger program is meager. Observing the basic precautions when working on the Internet, you can safely get rid of mobile antivirus: it will not make the device safer.
There were many weak points in the early versions of the Android OS. But since then more than 10 years have passed. Now Android is a fairly safe environment with its own set of measures against mobile threats.
What is embedded in Android to protect against malicious software?
Android is at risk of infection when the user changes the security settings installed by default.
The overwhelming majority of malicious programs penetrate the smartphone through dubious applications that managed to bypass the check algorithms when placement in the content store. If we talk about the Play Store, then there is a rarity situation there: Google has a reliable system to identify and eliminate Trojan horses.
The default Android does not allow installing applications from unofficial sources. If you use an exclusively Play Store, the device will be almost inaccessible for intruders.
Unfortunately, many people continue to upload content from sources of questionable reliability. Justice It is worth noting that there are many reasons to use third-party content stores (we wrote about it here ). Only all these reasons come with the eternal reservation: the solution to download or not the user takes at its own risk.
On Google Play, even the most cunning malicious crashes do not manage long. Everything that is in the store is subject to regular inspection, behind which both algorithms and real people stand. Each application that causes suspicion of safety service is carefully studied.
From time to time in the news, the information is slipped from time to time that in the Play Store, there was again the advertising software, then the encryptionman, then something else. Yes, the risk share always remains, but it is completely small: any threat to Google is able to quickly find and eliminate.
What should be the antivirus for the smartphone? Ideally, it should effectively resist network attacks and malicious scripts, protect personal data of the user without providing a noticeable memory load and processor. Many of the applications that are stated as antiviral, these tasks are not performed. But with them, the Play Protect service copes with them.
Why can Play Protect be trusted?
Play Protect Protective Service was created to combat malicious programs on the Android platform. It is based on a complex computer analysis, self-study and adaptation skill. Play Protect has a high level of access to the operating system, which allows you to analyze the hidden corners of Android, where malicious behavior can manifest.
Android OS itself is able to delete hazardous applications from the device without requesting user resolution.
Play Protect action applies to network connections and URLs, from where the files are loaded. If a website or other data channel is unreliable, the user immediately receives a yellow card.
No third-party application for malware protection does not have this level of access and resources as Play Protect. According to XYPRO, engaged in research in the field of digital security, google solutions are probably the best and most effective for finding and eliminating malware on Android.
What then to do with mobile antivirus for Android?
And here we got close to the main issue. Can someone besides Google to provide complete and efficient Android protection? Probably not.
We must admit that antiviruses for Android with good reputation exist. Their developers are probably on your hearing: they also supply complex protective solutions for desktop PCs. There will be no harm for them. But if an anti-virus application is present on the device from a little-known developer, boldly remove it: all the work for it and does the Play Protect.
