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Anti Virus apps

Calvia Rob

Lurker
Aug 27, 2012
4
0
Hi,
I've been using my Nexus 7 for almost a week now and have to admit that I am very impressed with it. As someone who is new to the Andriod O/S and am slowly learning it, but have over twenty years of Microsoft, is there a need for anti virus software for the Nexus 7 and if so what are the recommendations?
 
Yes. Its a must for android devices. The reason for that is, when compared with apple's iPhone/iPad apps run on the 'sandbox' environment which has restricted access with other apps. The android app store allows any third party developer to upload apps which may contain malicious apps. The apple's app store does not allow these uploads. Later these apps have been removed by Google. In order to save your device from virus, you need to have antivirus. The best one 'kaspersky tablet security'.
 
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Yes. Its a must for android devices. The reason for that is, when compared with apple's iPhone/iPad apps run on the 'sandbox' environment which has restricted access with other apps. The android app store allows any third party developer to upload apps which may contain malicious apps. The apple's app store does not allow these uploads. Later these apps have been removed by Google. In order to save your device from virus, you need to have antivirus. The best one 'kaspersky tablet security'.

I disagree with this strongly.

First off, Android apps are VERY sandboxed. The fact that they can access some other parts of the phone - which Apple apps can as well - does not mean they are not sandboxed.

It's actually this very sandboxing that makes antivirus apps essentially nothing more than "malicious app detectors." They are not actually detecting viruses or malicious behavior, they are just checking the list of apps on the phone and comparing it to a list of known bad apps. Since they are not doing any behavior monitoring, they can't proactively detect anything. Antivirus apps in Windows are given basically unrestricted access to monitor behavior, memory profiles, network access, etc., along with the CPU horsepower to effectively scan those things.

In addition - and again partly because of the sandboxing - most of the normal threats on computers are minimized. Apps don't infect other apps. They generally can't infect other parts of the file system. There aren't tons of services running that have inroads into the system. Apps are distributed through a central location, so virus makers can't infect an otherwise legitimate download.

If you need an app to tell you, "this app you downloaded is malicious" - that's fine, you can use a virus scanner. But if you aren't downloading questionable apps in the first place, you'll avoid the issue entirely.
 
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not really, android doesnt work like windows, and the browsers are apps that are sand boxed from the operating system, so the chances of a virus spreading from the browser to anything else are very small, I havent even heard of any virus that works that way on android.

Also, if you are not rooted, then there is even less chance that a "virus" could do any harm to the OS.
 
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Why is everyone only talking about apps? I'm sure its easy to pick up something from a web browser, more so than a app.

not really, android doesnt work like windows, and the browsers are apps that are sand boxed from the operating system, so the chances of a virus spreading from the browser to anything else are very small, I havent even heard of any virus that works that way on android.

Also, if you are not rooted, then there is even less chance that a "virus" could do any harm to the OS.
+1
its almost impossible! ;)
 
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linux is written that if you dont tell the file to run it WONT run. now the need for virus protection arises if you plan on using your n7 as a thumb drive (connected or wireless) to transfer files between linux and windows. i am a primarily linux user and i had a usb drive that was full of virus' but i had no idea until i transferred a file over to windows and my antivirus software went nuts!. 12 hours and 800 viruses later i scan all my drives a lot more often than i use to. but i still dont feel the ned to have av on my android. this was all between computers.
 
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Google: +FBI +Android

Personally I think you have your head in the sand if you think your tablet is immune. I use Avast. It is free and I'm not associated with it. Read reviews on Android virus apps.

Yea, Avast for me as well. No performance impact at all, has saved me trouble already.

Isn't the "don't need av, spyware, malware" mantra what iFans always said? "It's a windows thing".

They don't say that anymore.
 
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linux is written that if you dont tell the file to run it WONT run. now the need for virus protection arises if you plan on using your n7 as a thumb drive (connected or wireless) to transfer files between linux and windows. i am a primarily linux user and i had a usb drive that was full of virus' but i had no idea until i transferred a file over to windows and my antivirus software went nuts!. 12 hours and 800 viruses later i scan all my drives a lot more often than i use to. but i still dont feel the ned to have av on my android. this was all between computers.

I bet I know what was on that flash drive..... :rolleyes:
 
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Isn't the "don't need av, spyware, malware" mantra what iFans always said? "It's a windows thing".

They don't say that anymore.

This is a spurious comparison at best.

If you read my post above, you'll find out why "virus protection" apps are not really relevant in the smartphone/tablet world.

Mac users always said they didn't need malware detectors because malware generally wasn't written for the OS, not because of any technical reason why malware couldn't happen or malware detectors were ineffective.

In the Android/iOS/Windows Phone world, malware scanners can't do any kind of heuristics, which is one of the most important parts of a virus scanner. They can't detect "behavior" because there is neither the CPU horsepower nor access to the system to allow this. Consequently, all of these malware scanners are just comparing new apps against a list of known dangerous apps, which is a very ineffective way of doing things.

Much more effective is Google's new approach with 4.2 where it does active monitoring of the entire Android ecosystem and .apk files that it discovers across the web. They can load those into their test servers to do heuristic scanning and then mark them as dangerous. This only really works, though, because they already have search data across the web AND the entire contents of the Play Store on their servers.

It's not that virus scanners are "bad" per se, it's that they are not very effective.
 
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