Google's Open Source Programs Manager, Chris DiBona, recently posted a to his Google+ page a rant of sorts calling out mobile antivirus companies.
“Sometimes I read an article about open source that drives me nuts. A recent one stated, without irony, that ‘critics have been pounding the table for years about open source being inherently insecure' and that android is festooned with viruses because of that and because we do not exert apple like controls over the app market.”
In the post that follows he effectively explains how there is nothing inherently insecure about open source. Further more, no major cell phone has a ‘virus' problem in the traditional sense that windows and some mac machines have seen. If there were, they haven't gotten very far due to the user sandboxing models and the nature of the underlying kernels. Then his post gets especially juicy,
“virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you bs protection software for Android, RIM and IOS. They are charlatans and scammers. IF you work for a company selling virus protection for android, rim or IOS you should be ashamed of yourself.”
The fact of the matter is, the few issues we've seen haven't been viruses, but rather trojans. Viruses are different in that they have the property of spreading infection.
“The barriers to spreading such a program from phone to phone are large and difficult enough to traverse when you have legitimate access to the phone, but this isn't independence day, a virus that might work on one device won't magically spread to the other.”
In short, the claim is if you read an analyst report about ‘viruses' infecting your android phone, its safe to assume that analyst firm is dishonest and is staffed with, as DiBona would say, charlatans.
The openess of Android demands treating customers as responsible adults in order to offer them more control over software choices, which includes giving them the ability to make bad decisions. App permissions are expressed at the time of download and it is up to the user to accept them or not.
In my personal experience, I find Android antivirus to be worthless and bloating, but perhaps someone has a different experience to share. Feel free to speak up in the comments.
[via Google+]
