Phone Security and Virus Protection

[sblood86]

Firstly I want to apologize if this has been asked already I did a quick search but we all know how one can miss things in such a large forum.

My question is 2 parts.

The first part I'm curious about is virus protection. I see a fairly large amount of virus protection apps floating around the market and it makes me wonder; with android being a linux based operating system is there really a need for virus protection? Or is the virus protection being advertised really designed as a spyware protection rather than virus protection (sorry if the differentiation seems moot to some, my job is actually to fix peoples computers (windows and mac OS) when they have virus/spyware issues, because of that the two are no longer synonymous in my mind). What I mean is, are there actually viruses written to do malicious acts to the android device or kernel or simply phishing worms? Whatever the answer, should I be running one of these different virus protections, and if so, recommendations?

My second concern is to physical security; as in keeping people out of my texts etc. Obviously I could lock the phone, simple enough but what about keeping someone out of my email when I don't mind if they use the phone itself. There are even more app lockers than there are virus protection programs and really was hoping for some user recommendations as to which were reliable etc.

Thanks a lot!

 

[PensHockey]

Best thing you can do is get Lookout.
1. It scans all apps you download for any malware.
2. If you lose your phone you can locate it on a map, sound an alarm, or completely wipe the phone.

All the virus protection is mostly for downloading apps from 3rd parties. If they programed somthing in them. So if you stay on the market there is really no worries. A few apps made it on the market that had malware but were quickly pulled.

 

[sblood86]

Best thing you can do is get Lookout.
1. It scans all apps you download for any malware.
2. If you lose your phone you can locate it on a map, sound an alarm, or completely wipe the phone.

All the virus protection is mostly for downloading apps from 3rd parties. If they programed somthing in them. So if you stay on the market there is really no worries. A few apps made it on the market that had malware but were quickly pulled.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, I had been considering lookout but I thought it best to get some other opinions.

What about keeping people out of email etc; are any app lockers better than others or are they all pretty much the same. Looking for a free app that can be used to lock specific apps on my phone while leaving others unlocked. I'm tempted to just sit here and download several different ones and test them out, but I really like getting other peoples feedback. While I'm not new to computers or even android really, I am new to android built devices and therefore have no experience with the market lol

 

[PensHockey]

One to lock out certain apps would be Smart Applocker Free.