Fake Antivirus Scams Spread To Android

[Daniel]

Fake antivirus scams have plagued Windows and Mac OSX during the last couple of years. Now it seems like such scams have spread to Android. Fake antivirus scams on Android work the same as they do on PC's ? a user with an Android phone downloads an application or visits a website that says that the user's device is infected with malware. It will then show a fake scan of the system and return hard-coded 'positives' and gives the option the option to buy antivirus software that will 'remove' the malware on the affected system. Android, which is based on Linux, has been plagued with malware earlier too. According to McAfee, almost all new mobile malware now targets Android. Android app stores, including the official one from Google, has also been hosting hundreds of trojan applications that send premium rate SMSes on behalf of unsuspecting users.

http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/fa...d-users-122911
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/20/mca...up-37-percent/
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002280.html

Daniel Reviewed by Daniel on 2nd Jan 2012. Fake Antivirus Scams Spread To Android Fake antivirus scams have plagued Windows and Mac OSX during the last couple of years. Now it seems like such scams have spread to Android. Fake antivirus scams on Android work the same as they do on PC's ? a user with an Android phone downloads an application or visits a website that says that the user's device is infected with malware. It will then show a fake scan of the system and return hard-coded 'positives' and gives the option the option to buy antivirus software that will 'remove' the Rating: 5

[foxman]

Well, Major Anti-virus companies are doing it!

[Daniel]

I always believed that the day antivirus software becomes a universally accepted requirement the way it is on Windows is the day the platform has failed and missed the whole point of mobile operating systems.

[DLow]

the sad part is a large maijority of droid users are young ones and know nonthing about this stuff