Can smartphones be infected with viruses?

Nowadays, in many situations, smartphones begin to replace computers. Due to their increased processing capacity and larger screens, they become suitable for performing a wide range of tasks, once only feasible to run on a computer. Thus, it is important to reflect on whether one of the top computer issues, viruses, can also be extended to smartphones.

Smartphone virus

To answer the question at the beginning of this article, a smartphone is a computer, so it can be infected with viruses in exactly the same way. Although the sources of infection may be different and operating systems provide different security mechanisms, the truth is that you should have caution while surfing the Internet on your smartphone.

Sources of virus

The main sources of virus for smartphone is the installation of untrusted applications, the email attachements, and the downloaded files from web pages.

The download and installation on your system of applications of dubious origin is relatively frequent among smartphone users and constitutes one of the main sources of malicious software. You should only install apps published on the Apple Store or Google Play and trusted developers.

When you check your email attachments, as well as, download files from web pages it also can be another source of virus, in this case similar to computers. You should not run any software that comes to you in these two ways, as it may compromise the security of your smartphone.

Cares to have

Despite the increasing spread of malicious software to smartphones, the good news is that if you have cautions, you can have your smartphone free of these programs over time. As mentioned above, one of the main precautions you should take is to only install applications that are published on Google Play or the Apple Store and are from well known and trusted developers. Never install third-party software. Android smartphones have a setting that allows you to free up "software installation from unknown sources". You should not do this because it could open a very significant security breach in your system. Piracy software, for example, is often searched by users and it is the example of software that does not offer any kind of trust and that needs to be installed through third party websites.

Another caution you may have is installing anti-virus software on your smartphone, just as you usually do on computers. This software will be constantly monitoring threats that may arise, thus protecting your system steadily.

Conclusion

The use of a smartphone should take some care due to the increasing spread of viruses in these devices. The main rule to keep in mind is to never install applications or other software whose origin is doubtful. You should only install apps published to the Apple Store or Google Play and to known developers. The software published on this platform goes through a variety of validations at Apple and Google, which allows to guarantee some level of reliability.