Virus protection for smartphones
Does anyone have virus protection software on their phones? I've read conflicting reports of how useful they are. I don't have any at the moment but wondered if maybe I should?
Post edited by Rebelstar without a cause on
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Trouble with Android is that its just too damn powerful for regular users (I personally love it). You can have apps that sit in the background and perform certain tasks hidden away. Users have to grant permissions to allowing it access to the background, and allowing it access to the internet, and allowing it access to your phonebook but in general users just clock 'OK' and disregard the smallprint. I don't think there are any real Android viruses out there but rather socially engineered 'bad' applications.
The iPhone treats its users like the idiots it knows them to be and as such the apps are not able to run in the background like a virus. You can only perform certain activities in the background like playback of music or background voice chat. The rest of the iPhone 'multitasking' is trigger-based (such as notifications registered to particular applications that can trigger a context switch to foreground). Truth be told, this is actually quite a good system except in a few use-cases.
One of the great use-cases for Android apps that is just not possible with the iPhone is the concept of interceptors for system events. For example, an app called gBlocker can be used to block incoming calls from certain numbers or just make them conditionally silent. Great for having affairs and all that (I imagine). The iPhone certainly doesn't do any favors to adulterers.