According to the latest report from mobile security firm Lookout, malicious and dangerous apps on the Android platform have more than doubled in the past six months alone.
As reported on CNet’s Insecurity Complex, Lookout’s report focuses only on malware detected by their own Lookout Mobile Security app for Android, which has detected over 1,000 separate instances of Malware, compared to less than 500 back in June.
Considering that their report is based only on malware their own app has detected, it’s possible (and even likely) that the actual numbers of malware on Android are actually even higher.
Also noted in the report is that Android users are now four times more likely to come across malware than they were in early 2011.
Of course, we could have told you that. We’ve covered numerous reports from security experts such as Symantec, previous reports from Lookout Mobile, and several different reports from McAfee. Android’s malware problem is serious, and seems to be growing exponentially.
Even more interesting is that Android is the only mobile platform that seems to have a serious issue with Malware, as Apple’s iOS hasn’t had a single reported instance of malware ever, and platforms such as Nokia’s Symbian and Windows Mobile have had a dramatically lower rate of malware than Android.
In the end, it’s up to consumers to protect themselves by being careful about which apps they download (and from where), and by being cautions on unfamiliar websites, and the internet in general.
