Anti-virus available for Symbian phones

[Rafe]

Perhaps predictably after the news of Cabir comes news that an anti virus program has been released for both UIQ and Series 60. SimWorks Anti Virus from SimWorks claims to protect your phone against virus. Updates are delivered by additional install files to update virus defintions. At this stage there are not any serious Virii in the wild so you don't really need this!

Author Notes:

Protect your phone from viruses with Simworks Anti-Virus. SimWorks Anti-Virus actively scans and protects your phone from viruses. Unlike other products which operate from a PC, SimWorks Anti-Virus actually runs on your phone so you''''re protected 24x7, not just at your desktop.

Simworks Anti-Virus features:
- phone based application providing anytime anywhere protection;
- manual scan available anytime;
- set to autoscan as frequently as you want;
- includes 12 month subscription to SimWorks Anti-Virus update service; and
- transferrable between phones.

SimWorks' Anti-Virus protects phones from all known viruses including the recently discovered Cabir virus and is compatible with all phones using the Symbian operating system such as the popular SonyEricsson P800/P900 and Nokia's 6600.

With more and more smart phones shipped every year your phone is becoming a lot more attractive to virus writers and unlike traditional PC viruses, there's a much higher chance that a virus on your phone will hit you in the pocket.

What could a virus do?
- permanently burn out your SIM card;
- delete your address book;
- randomly send pictures from your phone's camera to people in your address book;
- make an expensive overseas phone call;
- use your phone to send SMS spam; or
- clock up expensive data charges.

Protect your phone with SimWorks Anti-Virus today.

[evobit]

Indeed predictable. I think I'll wait however, for a few more 'viruses' to be discovered, and the likes of symantec to release something before I invest

[Kamalayan]

Originally Posted by evobit

Indeed predictable. I think I'll wait however, for a few more 'viruses' to be discovered, and the likes of symantec to release something before I invest

Yup now they have the antivirus so when will they be mass producing the viruses?

[GhostDog]

Yup now they have the antivirus so when will they be mass producing the viruses?

Since its Symbian OS we are talking about,not any time soon.

[Kamalayan]

Originally Posted by GhostDog

Since its Symbian OS we are talking about,not any time soon.

Yes symbian for me is not yet perfect or at least stable. Any badly written program or lacked beta testing can cause system errors to some degree. So a virus MAY mean a program that will destroy the phones hardware or corrupt the internal memory or plainly an annoying program that would make ur phone vulnerable or whatever.

They have to find ways of making symbian work better rather than gear up for defense.

Like some program I just used, Handy photo safe, it doesnt really encrypt ur pics it just stores it somewhere in the internal memory yet its still browsable...

I mean theres really no security in it. Same with symbian, a program can crash anytime why wait for a virus?

[evobit]

Originally Posted by Kamalayan

I mean theres really no security in it. Same with symbian, a program can crash anytime why wait for a virus?

By definition, a virus is self-propogating. Symbian does not allow this (or has not been exploited this way yet). Current viruses for Symbian are not actually viruses, but malware.

Big difference between an unstable program and a virus.

BTW Rafe, virii is not a word... viruses is the plural

[Delta737]

I think virii is the Latin plural of virus

But back on topic. Like my-symbian.com states, this app is "ahead of its time" (since there is no real virus yet). And I hope it stays that way for a very very long time!

[evobit]

Sorry I can't help myself

Originally Posted by http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language/v/virus.html

It is not viri, or (worse) virii. True, the word comes directly from Latin, but not all Latin words ending in -us have -i as their plural. Besides, viri is the Latin word for 'men' (plural of vir, "man," the root of English virile). There is in fact no written attestation of a Latin plural of virus.

*edit.. can't spell either.. doh.

[nish]

Seeing as this thread is a bit dated would anyone recommend that an av program is now needed?

Was just looking at Fsecure and Simworks.

??

[N/A]

No AV program is needed, if you don't accept and install unsolicited apps sent to you (by friends or strangers), and if you don't download software from dubious sites offering cracked/pirated apps (warez).

There is no mobile phone malware/virus that installs itself without the phone user helping by accepting a Bluetooth connection or opening and running a harmful installation file.

thanx