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Loading...At this point in time, if you have a phone then you need a phone virus cleaner. Neither XProtect nor Google Play Protect is enough on its own. There is a wide range of phone virus cleaners on the market right now and while choice is usually good, it can become confusing. With that in mind, here are four ways to identify a high-quality virus cleaner.
It’s backed by an experienced IT-security company
Neither Apple nor Google (nor Microsoft) is an IT-security company. They certainly have extensive resources, but they do not have the same level of experience or expertise as the dedicated IT-security companies. In simple terms, the security apps bundled with the main operating systems are enough to get you online to download a proper phone virus cleaner and should alert you if you are on the point of downloading an application which is known to be malicious, but really that’s about it. The phone antivirus cleaners offered by the main IT-security companies can, however, do a whole lot more.
It offers robust protection against malware in general
Even IT-security professionals use the term “virus” as a catch-all for “malicious computer software”, but really, what you need to protect against is malware. Viruses certainly form a significant chunk of all malware, but there are plenty of other varieties of which the most annoying is probably adware and the most worrying (at least at this point) is spyware.
The best phone virus cleaners can also handle modern twists on classic viruses, such as hybrids and fileless viruses (viruses which do not need to be contained in code such as a program or a document which runs macros). They will also handle cellphone-specific threats such as USSD attacks.
In simple terms, USSD attacks are a type of cyberthreat which exploits security weaknesses in the cellular network rather than the regular internet. The growth in the use of cellphones means that these types of attacks are becoming more common and the extent to which cellphones are now used as a form of identification means that they are now becoming a more serious issue. In short, these attacks can be a significant risk to your identity.
Possibly the most famous example of this was how Jack Dorsay, founder and CEO of Twitter, lost access to his own Twitter account after his cellphone was attacked by people who, according to Twitter, took advantage of a security vulnerability in his cellphone network. In that instance, it was nothing more than a minor inconvenience (and embarrassment), although that is bad enough, but the potential consequences are massively worse.
High-quality phone virus cleaners will also be able to filter caller IDs to check for known spam numbers. This is far more than just a convenience, it’s an important security feature to protect against rogue callers trying to trick you out of important information, such as your bank details (this approach is known as phishing) and from text messages which carry malicious links which you might unwarily, or accidentally, click.
It works without noticeably slowing down your phone
Creating high-quality phone virus cleaners is actually quite a significant technical challenge. In the world of desktops and laptops, the machines are physically big enough that they can fit in much more storage and memory than even premium phones and they also have space for fans to cool faster processors. In the world of mobile devices, however, the machines themselves are much smaller and so physically don’t have room for the same level of hardware. In fact, even though budget mobiles have more raw computing power than the desktops and laptops of just a few years ago, they have very limited capabilities by modern standards and, frankly, that is what matters in the real world.
Because of this (and even with premium phones) you want apps to be coded as tightly as possible, which is to say, you want them to run with maximum efficiency to minimize the drain on your system resources. Ideally, you also want them to offer the functionality to optimize your system settings and to run non-urgent and resource-intensive tasks at a time which suits you, for example, overnight, when you’re phone’s not likely to be in use, rather than having them decide to run themselves whenever they feel like it.
It’s regularly updated
In today’s world, this is absolutely non-negotiable. Reputable IT-security companies such as Comodo are continually updating their products to ensure that their customers stay protected against threats as soon as they emerge. Comodo antivirus for Android and iOS is recognized as a market-leading product and it’s available for a very budget-friendly price. Head on over to the Comodo website to buy it now and keep your data protected.
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