Cellphone Viruses – Is Your Phone Safe?

You might already know a good bit about the viruses that can infect your computer, and the need to be careful when downloading or installing software. You might tell everyone in your home how to be careful on the Internet and how to avoid downloading spyware or viruses and other types of infection.

What you might have forgotten, however, is that your cell phone is also at risk. Today’s cell phones, like smartphones and other mobile devices are more than just simple telephones. We rely on them as much as we rely on our computers. They keep our calendars, our to-do lists, our address books, and a number of other things that are vitally important to us.

What you might not realize is that your phone is on one of the most public networks in the world. In China, for example, there are more than 500 million cell phone users. We are all sharing this global network so the risk is absolutely massive.

Most cell phones don’t use Windows, so any infection can’t come in that way, but they do have operating systems and various applications that help them to run and perform the various functions that we require of them. Generally, most of the operating system and application functions are burned into the phones chip and can be very hard to infect, but with more and more of us downloading music, photos, and whole applications onto our devices, we increase the risk of infection.

Because it is possible these days for any kind of file to harbor a virus, there can be much vulnerability in the applications that you’re using on your phone. Here’s how it might work: you might download an image file to your phone, and later upload the image to your computer. Inside that image photo there could be a small virus, which can’t infect your phone but which can infect your computer later when you upload that photo to your computer. If you think about it, this is the same way computers have always been infected. Originally it was through floppy disks and then CDs, and now through this new world of using our cell phones in conjunction with our computers.

Although it is harder to infect a cell phone, PDA or other mobile device with a virus, it can happen. Because most have a storage component, and graphic interfaces, it is possible for files to get deleted or for files to become infected and for applications to go haywire.

Do you accept e-mail via your cell phone? If so, then you can download an e-mail attachment through your cell phone designed specifically to attack your phone. This same virus might not cause any harm to your computer.

Because cell phones and other mobile devices are designed to operate wirelessly, they usually have a set of protocols that allow them to operate with other devices. One of these protocols, for example, might be Bluetooth. Because this creates a series of ports in your phone, that standard wireless connection that you use and that someone standing 30 feet away from you is using could be the route through which a virus is distributed.

One way you can ensure that viruses do not infect your cell phone or other mobile device is to close any unused data ports, just as you would on your computer, and read your cell phone manual carefully to see what other security precautions you can take.