Cell (mobile) phone safety
Mobile phone viruses
Online virus warnings about e-mail worms and trojans are familiar enough and they are something that mobile phone users are also going to have to consider.
We have looked at cell phone scams and spam and, just as we can see evidence of the same junk that appears in our Inbox, we can expect mobile viruses to be the next step.
It is only a matter of time
There are already viruses for the pocket PC and palm operating system 'in the wild' and the problem is bad enough that a virus checker, pc-cillan, has been adapted to work on mobile devices. Without a doubt these viruses will be adapted to work on the next generation of phones, and with the rise of always on data solutions to next generation phones, like GPRS and UTMS, the exposure presented to crackers is getting larger.
These problems however are being tackled at the network end, with firewall implementation from the networks, but it remains to see how big a problem it will be. Sensible use, the same as you would apply to e-mail and your computer will soon have to apply to mobile phones, and as always how exposed you are depends on the decisions you make.
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