When it comes to spreading threats, these are times when you need to be able to tell if your phone has a virus. Trojans, for example, are constantly reminding us all of the potential dangers that can plague a phone. Therefore, it is important to possess up-to-date knowledge regarding virus detection and access to all the needed tools and services for its protection.
It is important to note that, due to the peculiarities of each operating system, it is easier to infect an Android phone than an iPhone with iOS. However, neither of them is immune to the threat of viruses, so we will explain in a quick and practical way, how to know if there is something strange installed on your cell phone.
Likewise, we recommend that you take a look at how to remove viruses on your phone. This is important since your phone can already be infected.
Types of viruses
It is not necessary to understand the technical behavior of each virus in depth, but it is important to know the types that exist and the damage that the most common ones do. This will help you know where to start looking, as each virus behaves differently. So, here are three most common viruses on cell phones.
Adware
Adware is one of the most common and, as its name suggests, injects ads into your phone. If your phone shows ads where it didn’t before (certain applications, settings, messages, and so on), you might be infected with adware. Adware is generally not as dangerous as other types of viruses, but it can receive user data, so it is important to recognize it.
Trojans
Trojans are viruses that can behave in different ways, but usually have one thing in common: they are difficult to detect. One example is System Update, an application that pretended to be an Android system update and that stole information from your phone, took pictures, and was able to turn on your own microphone.
Spyware
Finally there is spyware, a virus that runs in the background to collect information from the user. These are applications that usually abuse the camera and microphone permissions even though they don’t need them to work.
Signs that the phone is infected
Unfortunately, viruses are becoming more and more sophisticated, and therefore more and more difficult to recognize. However, we will give you some basic tips on how to tell if you have a virus on your cell phone by analyzing some possible strange behavior:
- Abnormal cell phone performance: menus and applications that close, applications that are installed without our permission, settings that change on their own, etc;
- Excessive battery consumption: from the battery settings we can see which process is using up so much battery. If there is a strange application we may be infected;
- Advertising where there shouldn’t be: if your phone shows more ads than usual, and especially in browsers where there were none before, you may have adware;
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Services that help you clean the virus
Well, now that we have talked about how to know if your cell phone has a virus, it is time to talk about how to remove these viruses.
Main operators typically offer digital protection plans for their clients, and all of them offer some type of antivirus, cloud storage, anti-spam, among other things.
Check out the contents of the plan of your operator and compare it to others.
- Avast Mobile Security, ESET Mobile Security & Antivirus, and Norton Mobile Security are leading antivirus options. They provide powerful malware detection technology and additional security features.
- TotalAV Antivirus & VPN includes a VPN that allows you to anonymize your activity, but customer service is slow.
- McAfee Mobile Security detects all malware on Android, but severely degrades performance.
- Bitdefender Mobile Security is a fast antivirus scanner that has almost no impact on device performance, but lacks a website filter.
- Android devices can be protected by Panda Dome that provides protection based on artificial intelligence; it detects all latest threats, but again has no web filter.
Have your phone updated
Both the manufacturers of Android customization layers, as well as Google itself or Apple with iOS, spend a lot of time investigating security flaws in their mobile software. Based on the investigations, they release updates to implement packages that protect devices from these vulnerabilities.
For this reason, it is important to always have the latest version of the system available for your cell phone. Of course, unfortunately updating your phone may not be enough and you will have to combine it with tools like the ones listed above, but it is an essential recommendation and will give a very important extra security to your Android or iPhone.
However, if your phone is already damaged by viruses or in any other way, you may need to seek professional service. Smart Addiction provides this kind of service in Brooklyn, which is something both residents and visitors of New York City can take advantage of.
