Mobile phone viruses: ‘Don’t panic!’
Research out this week from antivirus giant Symantec suggests users are wising up to a growing threat of mobile phone viruses. But one company which handles support for major mobile operators claims the threat is being blown well out of proportion and the latest figures reveal a gulf between “perception and reality”.
Symantec claims 73 per cent of smart phone users are aware of viruses and attacks aimed at their handsets and while that may be encouraging in a ‘better safe than sorry’ way, Doug Overton head of communications at WDSGlobal believes we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact such problems are very few and far between.
WDSGlobal handles data support calls for HP, Nokia, Orange, Sony-Ericsson and T-Mobile, and Overton said in the last quarter it received just 10 end user enquiries about smart phone viruses, out of the 275,000 calls it fielded - that equates to 0.0036 per cent of all calls.
According to Symantec, which polled a fairly small sample of 300 smart phone users, nearly 70 per cent of respondents are worried about virus writers stealing confidential information contained on their phones.