Protect Your Smartphone From Viruses, With and Without Antivirus

Real plagues on computers, computer viruses have been arriving on mobile phones for some time. Should we be worried? Do they jeopardise the security of phones? Are there antiviruses for smartphones? Answers.

Understand what a virus is to protect your smartphone

It is important to know the different terminologies to protect your smartphone from viruses. You should not confuse computer virus and computer worm. A computer virus is, initially, a non-malicious program called "self-replicating", capable of creating a copy of itself autonomously. You just need to create malicious code and associate it with the virus to create malicious software capable of harming a computer. A computer virus is spread by all means of data exchange such as networks, USB keys, CDs ...

Unlike a virus, a computer worm does not need a "host" program to reproduce itself. It is this characteristic which makes it a particularly virulent element: the worm exploits the resources of the computer to be able to reproduce. And it only needs Internet access to spread from computer to computer. Hence the need to protect your smartphone from viruses.

Whether it is a worm or a malicious virus, their consequences can be unfortunate:

loss of your data;

theft of your data for fraudulent use;

espionage (which can be industrial).

Cyber ​​risk, a threat with many faces

This is why anti-virus software has been created to protect computers and in particular Windows which is, even today, the operating system most used in the world (therefore the one favoured by malicious hackers).

A phenomenon that is spreading and requires you to protect your smartphone

With the development of smartphones and the democratization of the mobile Internet, the issue of mobile viruses quickly arose. It is often considered that the first mobile worm, Cabir, was created in 2004! It must be said that smartphones facilitate access to the Internet and therefore also the spread of viruses and worms.

As soon as the number of mobile users continues to increase, the mobile target will become more and more interesting for virus creators. Not protecting your smartphone from viruses then becomes more and more risky.

 How do I know if my mobile phone is hack?

To avoid any risk of infection, it is first of all necessary to update the system of your mobile. In fact, in addition to the new application features that these updates bring, they most often lead to better stability of the operating system and respond to the latest security vulnerabilities that may be compromised by new viruses.

In addition to the updates offered by the manufacturers, there are applications on the various stores to protect your smartphone from viruses like Protegent360 Total security  Mobile Security. Already famous for its PC software, this paid version of phone antivirus is just as effective in protecting your mobile.

Free and powerful antivirus applications for smartphones are also available, such as Lookout. Already installed on more than 30 million mobiles, Lookout is one of the best free solutions that exists today. This complete application protects you from dangerous Internet addresses, questionable emails, suspicious numbers ... and even allows you to geolocate your mobile from the lookout.com site. A premium version of Lookout takes you one step further to protect your phone from viruses and for example gives you the option to restore lost data to a new device.

Discover Lookout premium in our Orange store

Viruses teach us that our computers and mobiles, like living things, face ever-changing threats. They also need to evolve, to be updated and to be protected by up-to-date antiviruses for mobile phones.

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