HYDERABAD: How effective are mobile phone anti-virus applications? A recent survey assessing 200 antivirus apps available on Google Play found a number of them were either dubious, deceptive, ineffective or downright unsafe.
The report Anti-Virus Comparative reveals 79 antiviruses detected less than 30 per cent of Android malware and had a very high false alarm rate on clean files. A few of these flagged apps include AndroHelm, ANTI VIRUS Security, ARSdev, AVC Security Joint Stock Company, AZ Super Tools and others.
The report said, “We consider those apps to be risky, as they are either dubious or unsafe. In a few cases, the apps are simply buggy, e.g. because they have poorly implemented a third-party engine... Some of the apps were detecting only a handful of very old malware.”
The survey looked into 2,000 common Android malware threats of 2017. Since the samples were old, the detection rate was on an average 90 per cent, though 100 per cent could have been achieved easily. However, the ones that were flagged in the study had detection rates ranging from 87 per cent to as low as 37.6 per cent.
As of now, 41 of the flagged apps have been removed from Google Play. Most of the apps which were removed were found to be developed by “software manufacturers not focused on security business. That is, developers who make all kinds of apps and are in the advertisement business or just want to have an Android protection app in their portfolio for publicity reasons”.