Virus protection apps - Nexus S Themes and Apps

Are these types of apps worth having on your phone? Like is there even a moderate chance you could get a virus (especially if you dont do lots of downloading)? I currently have the AVG free app and I find it kind of annoying having it scan everything I download and having it say protected by AVG on my screen, etc.
I have never heard of anyone getting a virus on their smartphone so I', leaning towards removing the AVG app. Would this be a mistake?

The only malware that are on Android affects Android versions < 2.3.3. You're fine.
As long as you're getting trustworthy apps on the market with a lot of downloads and not from a 3rd-party unauthorized website/app market/whatever. You're fine.
I personally use Lookout for the GPS feature, the Anti-Virus is just a sidebonus. I disable scheduled scanning because its not worth it.

It's much harder for malware to worm its way onto your Android than on a desktop OS. Generally it happens when people hide malicious activity in seemingly harmless apps. The only way to protect against that is to look at the requested permissions when you install things are make sure it is only using things it needs. Also, check the comments and use reputable developers from the Android Market.
Even these antivirus tools can't protect you from a malicious app though cos they have no way of knowing what you meant to allow the app to do and what it's doing without telling you.

i'm using Lookout it's free, and non memory resident if you choose not to
but still works when you install something new, it tells you if it's safe or not

I m using AVG as well as Lookout.. actually jsut trying them out. Thinking should I keep or Uninstall ? :/

there are also Symantec Antivirus, and McAfee both also "free" for basic features just like Lookout
but no where near as good and easy to use as Lookout
and there are a whole slew of new comers go the Antivirus industry for smartphones which i don't even recognize their names
a simple search for antivirus on market comes out with 3+ pages of well known and not so well known results
https://market.android.com/search?q=antivirus&c=apps

Related

Infected with Viruses DX

What is the best program to clean them all away! I am afraid to log into anything essential. I need help ASAP, I have disabled the suspicious .exe's running.
Also my google searches get redirected. . . what else should I do?
heyy Tilto,
a quick and simple way is to backup ur data and reload your os
i to would recommend as tpam says, to reload your os, that way no viruses and you will have a much faster cleaner system if you bought a machine in the last few years i would have thought it would have come with a recovery disk, just stick that in and it will load all the drivers as well.
have fun
I could do that, but I just recently reloaded Windows 7, and I don't have the time to reorganize and re-do everything.
I would highly recommend you use another computer to download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (free) and the latest virus database for use with Malwarebytes onto a USB flash drive. Then, boot into safe mode on your machine, and install Malwarebytes and the latest database (in that order). Run a full scan through Malwarebytes on all your hard drives, and delete/repair any infected files, and that should be it (though you can always run another scan for good measure). While you're at it, you might try finding a better antivirus than the one you're using so you don't get infected again. Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast!, and AVG Free are all decent free ones, with Avast! being my favorite. Kaspersky is also a good paid antivirus.
Most of my friends and family are computer illiterate, and get infected every so often, but I've never come across malware on their machines that couldn't be removed with Malwarebytes.
I am using Both Malwarebytes, and Microsoft Security Essentials right now.
AVG Free is the sh*t man!
Although I no longer use t due to the fact that I play MMOFPS, and sometimes like to hack
I am also using Spybot Search and destroy.
I use THENON antivirus
And FORMAT antivirus
Both free

how would you look for viruses?

I don't use an antivirus on my windows desktop, I always keep an eye in msconfig and task manager (I know most of the processes), services.msc, unusual behavior, etc, once a year I run an antivirus scan never found anything, I have been clean for more than 3 years.
I have previously installed lookout on my Note but found it to slowdown the system a little bit, so I removed it, and now I don't have any antivirus but I keep an eye at the running proccesses, but I'm unsure if that's the way to spot a running background virus in a linux system
what do you guys do or advise doing to look out for viruses on android?
Are you rooted? If not then don't worry about Viruses.
If you are rooted don't install any shady apps outside from the Android market or make sure any non market apps are from trusted sources.
Also read this:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/1147650...dDLPv#114765095157367281222/posts/ZqPvFwdDLPv
Actually, even the apps on the Android market, approved by Google, are not safe. There have been couple incidents of rogue apps show up in market last year. Good thing is Google are proactively plugging those OS exploits that these rogue apps use (they will auto-root your phone). So, if you're on latest Gingerbread OS (2.3.4 or later), most of those exploits no longer work. But there is now a new exploit now been used here on XDA to root the phone (search ZergRush). Not sure if this will be used in next wave of rogue apps. Remember, just because you installed an app from market, doesn't mean it is safe. Google made zero effort to review those apps.
thanks a lot for the article, it is a lot like I suspected, specially about companies bullshitting us to get to buy their antivirus software
about web based virus, from that I'm 90% safe because I only access the same websites every day, unless one of them gets attacked I'm sure I won't get a virus from them
and yes, I'm rooted... two things I wonder are:
1 - shouldn't an infected app show the permission pop up asking for root access? I'm not exactly sure but I think there are ways to circunvent that and force root access without permission
2 - if I'm infected and perform a full wipe (cache, dalvik, factory reset) and change roms, can I still be infected? I ask this because I noticed that some folders aren't affected when performing a full wipe, the rom goes into /system, and the factory reset only cleans /data. So there is no way to completely clean a system I guess.
As someone who works in internet security, I have to tell you that you really should be running anti-virus on your desktop.
Yes, there's a lot of marketing and fear-mongering from some companies to buy their products. But it doesn't matter if you think you're tech-savvy and that you check task manager and only visit "safe websites". Any website can deliver drive-by downloads that infect your computer without you knowing. Rootkits are completely undetectable from simply checking your listed processes and services.
And your websites might be safe and legit, but all sorts of malware and exploits are delivered through ads. Even visiting Google search recently infected users.
Anti-virus is a crappy technology (there's better alternatives), but stop being so idealogical and just install the damn thing.
---------- Post added at 03:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:24 PM ----------
inurb said:
Also read this:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/1147650...dDLPv#114765095157367281222/posts/ZqPvFwdDLPv
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the link. That's a terrible, terrible article though that completely misses the point.
It's a typical viewpoint from a large company like Google. Their interest is in what % of their users are affected by X and Y.
There is certainly no "widespread problem" with viruses on Android or indeed Linux. But the vulnerabilities are HUGE. The only reason they're not exploited more is because of the size of the userbase. Android (and to a lesser extent Ubuntu) is growing to such an extent that it is going to become a very serious problem, very soon.
As to the now: there is very little chance of being infected out of millions of normal users. But if you're doing sensitive work, then it does make sense to seek extra protection, as the Linux and Android vulnerabilities are so big that if someone actively targets you, it will be easy.
If you're not using sensitive data on your Note, then sure, don't worry about it.
edanfalls said:
As someone who works in internet security, I have to tell you that you really should be running anti-virus on your desktop.
....
Anti-virus is a crappy technology (there's better alternatives), but stop being so idealogical and just install the damn thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your advise is sound but just one tiny flaw:
As you posted, AV softwares are crappy technologies. They rarely ever catch anything, especially worthless towards the browser plugin based malwares. And yet, they DO make every PC installed with them 10x slower. So, in the end, installing AV software doing more damage to your PC on daily basises.
Use 'LBE Safety Master' (root required) and you will be fully protected.
lbe doesn't protect with reboot. Wonder if apps can make use of that flaw, logg and send when API or connection becomes available.
Better alternative, if you can get a patch would be forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1357056
I guess one must take into mind the shift of definition from virus/malware to user approved info gathering through permissions lmao.
You can install droidwall and check it's logs for connections. Setting it up can be tedious due to dependent stuff.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

I want to see what's consuming my ram.

Hello everyone.
Even after hibernating all the apps, still 2GB of my ram is used. I want to look at all the processes that are using the ram. How can I do that?
Cheers!
Until someone comes up with a better answer...
Settings/Apps. Under each app there are stats for used storage and memory used in the past few hours. Might give you a clue.
xhamadeex said:
Hello everyone.
Even after hibernating all the apps, still 2GB of my ram is used. I want to look at all the processes that are using the ram. How can I do that?
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because ANDROID KNOWS that UNUSED RAM is WASTED RAM.
It ***preloads*** all of the things, in order of what it believes is the likelihood of you using those particular things.
This way when you actually DO use one of those things, it is ***already loaded*** (and starts fast).
Stop "hibernating" things. You are breaking Android.
doitright said:
Because ANDROID KNOWS that UNUSED RAM is WASTED RAM.
It ***preloads*** all of the things, in order of what it believes is the likelihood of you using those particular things.
This way when you actually DO use one of those things, it is ***already loaded*** (and starts fast).
Stop "hibernating" things. You are breaking Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm.. You have a point..
So, is using Greenify a bad Idea?
xhamadeex said:
Hmm.. You have a point..
So, is using Greenify a bad Idea?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bad idea.
yea there's two built-in ways to view running processes. One is directly Settings. Scroll down to where it says Memory. Open and check it out. I know. Google might as well not even wasted their time making that activity since it's next to useless. The other one is located in Developer Options. It's labeled "Running Services" and gives you stats on what apps are running, how long, etc. Yea, not very helpful either since there isn't much you can do besides uninstall some things or do the root and ransack thing. It's intentionally made like that, just like the way android battery stats are completely useless for nailing down offensive background services. Google likes it that way. They make money by tracking your location and serving you up with as many ads as possible. While it's true what dude said about the way Android preloads and makes a lot of stuff ready in RAM, hibernating, and using task killers is basically like working against your system resources, don't listen to people who yell things at you because they've been brainwashed by companies and developers who want their services installed, front-and-center, autostarting, and running 24/7 in your device's memory. Why else you think every website has a banner talkin' bout "oooh ooh install our app" and grant as many permissions as possible while some even go as far as sabotaging their own services via their website so users feel forced to install the app. They don't care about you, your cpu, or your experience as long as it's filled with ads and periodically uploading analytics and usage stats and the best way to do that is to have background and persistent services to silently restart their location polling or pointless notification systems designed solely around getting you to interact with the app. I'm not talking about things like email, messaging, or whatever other app you depend on or feel is important enough to keep close at a tap of finger. My suggestion is to analyze those settings activities I named earlier or a 3rd party one like BBS and make some decisions about what you are willing to delete. Compromises can be made depending on what's important to you and also with root. Half (or more) of the apps in your phone that have boot receivers and other various event listeners up the wazoo have no business knowing your phone is even on until you tap it's little icon. This is opinion of course because others will tell you you're breaking android and a bunch of other nonsense they've been fed by google to address the people, like me, who are tired of seeing google and other apps (usually ones my by behemoth corporations) that run constantly in the background even though I open up and use whatever particular app maybe once a week. If you're rooted, there is a lot you can do to take control of apps that like to stay nudged up as close as possible in the queue and keep open connections. It all depends on you and how you use your device. Don't listen to know-it-alls who yell at you IN ALL CAPS. Either accept the fact that google, facebook, admob (and whoever else app you have that thinks it's the most important) own your phone, or do a little research for yourself because regardless of what homeboy said, it's easy to see that available RAM feels way smoother than ram that has to wait for android to move pokey balls out of the way...just sayin
ElwOOd_CbGp said:
yea there's two built-in ways to view running processes. One is directly Settings. Scroll down to where it says Memory. Open and check it out. I know. Google might as well not even wasted their time making that activity since it's next to useless. The other one is located in Developer Options. It's labeled "Running Services" and gives you stats on what apps are running, how long, etc. Yea, not very helpful either since there isn't much you can do besides uninstall some things or do the root and ransack thing. It's intentionally made like that, just like the way android battery stats are completely useless for nailing down offensive background services. Google likes it that way. They make money by tracking your location and serving you up with as many ads as possible. While it's true what dude said about the way Android preloads and makes a lot of stuff ready in RAM, hibernating, and using task killers is basically like working against your system resources, don't listen to people who yell things at you because they've been brainwashed by companies and developers who want their services installed, autostarting, and running 24/7 in your device. Why else you think every website has a banner talkin' bout "oooh ooh install our app" and grant as many permissions as possible while some even go as far as sabotaging their own services via their website so users feel forced to install the app. They don't care about you, your cpu, or your experience as long as it's filled with ads and periodically uploading analytics and usage stats and the best way to do that is to have background and persistent services to silently restart their location polling or pointless notification systems designed solely around getting you to interact with the app. I'm not talking about things like email, messaging, or whatever other app you depend on or feel is important enough to keep close at a tap of finger. My suggestion is to analyze those settings activities I named earlier or a 3rd party one like BBS and make some decisions about what you are willing to delete. Compromises can be made depending on what's important to you and also with root. Half (or more) of the apps in your phone that have boot receivers and other various event listeners up the wazoo have no business knowing your phone is even on until you tap it's little icon. This is opinion of course because others will tell you you're breaking android and a bunch of other nonsense they've been fed by google to address the people, like me, who are tired of seeing google and other apps (usually ones my by behemoth corporations) that run constantly in the background even though I open up and use whatever particular app maybe once a week. If you're rooted, there is a lot you can do to take control of apps that like to stay nudged up as close as possible in the queue and keep open connections. It all depends on you and how you use your device. Don't listen to know-it-alls who yell at you IN ALL CAPS. Either accept the fact that google, facebook, admob (and whoever else app you have that thinks it's the most important) own your phone, or do a little research for yourself because regardless of what homeboy said, it's easy to see that available RAM feels way smoother than ram that has to wait for android to move pokey balls out of the way...just sayin
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Holy wall of text Batman!
You've got a couple of points hidden inside that rambling, but dude... If you want anyone to read that, try that little thing called paragraphs.
Didgeridoohan said:
Holy wall of text Batman!
You've got a couple of points hidden inside that rambling, but dude... If you want anyone to read that, try that little thing called paragraphs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah...apologies. I may have been a little bit hopped up last night on the leftover holiday spirits but how else to explain what I see as google's all-over-the-place ridiculous approach at making it as god awful experience as possible for people interested in granular control over their devices' /system. I just got done flashing, setting up, and going thru the motions on a new phone so I may have been a little annoyed as well. lolz hope it helps someone.

P9 anti virus

Is the built in anti virus on the P9 sufficient or is it advisable to download another one.
Any advice please.?
1. There are no viruses on Android
2. Most of apps that call them self anitivirus are nothing more but crap that beside sucking memory and battery do nothing
3. Most of problems that people call "virus" is nothing more but some crappy made app that mess up phone performance or download few other crappy apps in background like lockscreen or cleaner.
4. Build in antivirus on Huawei is just icon that do nothing... because it dont have anything to do, BECAUSE look at point 1.
Im using android for almost... forever of it existing, I was rooting and giving free access to all apps i could, I once did test and clicked all ads and installed all shady apps I could find, give them root access... and beside few more crappy apps that they downloaded in background... NOTHING.
Even my router logs didnt show any weird data that was send/recived in phone.
All you can get on your phone is viruses that are made for PC, that will transfer them self to it when you connect it to PC, this is only example that I know that someone had related to "viruses", but it was not even made for android...
All you need to do, to keep your device in good shape and safe, is to keep it clean, use build in cleaner that is good for removing trash files, and keeping an eye on permissions of apps, if app dont need internet access or contact list, remove that permission.
Simple as that...
This is pretty much it. Don't be the user that installs 5 cleaning apps / anti-viruses and wonder why the phone is so slow. I see users every week that slow their phone down with this stuff.

Maze Alpha X shipped with adware?

Accidentally I stumbled upon the folder gangyun and pref_storekeytool inside.
I scanned the Maze with an antivirus scanner and beautysnap.apk was reported as adware.
I guess beautysnap.apk is part of the system camera?
Unfortunately no app can beautify me, so I would like to delete this app. Is it safe to do it?
TIA
bestunameever said:
Accidentally I stumbled upon the folder gangyun and pref_storekeytool inside.
I scanned the Maze with an antivirus scanner and beautysnap.apk was reported as adware.
I guess beautysnap.apk is part of the system camera?
Unfortunately no app can beautify me, so I would like to delete this app. Is it safe to do it?
TIA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What virus scanner did you use? I've just received my Maze Alpha X. There are some bad things about this phone, I'm a bit disappointed. The worst in my case is that the front camera doesn't work. It's like there's no camera at all.
Yeah unfortunately this phone is loaded with precarious apps, adupsfota for instance disguised as the ota wireless update is full of dodgy adware/spyware and if you look at the permissions your see just how worrying it is, it has permission to access banking apps, android pay, key-logger, microphone, camera the list goes on, I've disabled it several times but it manages to re-enable itself. Beautysnap is also a bad one which I have managed to disable for good, LocationEM2 is another suspect app, Fotaprovider which is also adups related. Basically this phone really needs an alternative kernel/custom rom before it can be safely used but as far as I'm aware there isn't one as yet.
The CPU usage is always very high too which is not a great sign, not good at all, I'm surprised Amazon can sell phones in this state tbh.
McSwifty said:
Yeah unfortunately this phone is loaded with precarious apps, adupsfota for instance disguised as the ota wireless update is full of dodgy adware/spyware and if you look at the permissions your see just how worrying it is, it has permission to access banking apps, android pay, key-logger, microphone, camera the list goes on, I've disabled it several times but it manages to re-enable itself. Beautysnap is also a bad one which I have managed to disable for good, LocationEM2 is another suspect app, Fotaprovider which is also adups related. Basically this phone really needs an alternative kernel/custom rom before it can be safely used but as far as I'm aware there isn't one as yet.
The CPU usage is always very high too which is not a great sign, not good at all, I'm surprised Amazon can sell phones in this state tbh.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you please say what scanner did you use?
dangerous666 said:
Could you please say what scanner did you use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ive used a few but the adware/malware/spyware that the phone has installed as standard on the kernal/rom it's shipped with are installed as system apps with the exception of beautysnap so you need to go through them manually. I used an app called SystemPanel2, it's a great app that gives you a really complete overview of whats running on your phone and what not, it can record system processes, memory, battery and cpu usage over a period of time as well as network stats.
McSwifty said:
Ive used a few but the adware/malware/spyware that the phone has installed as standard on the kernal/rom it's shipped with are installed as system apps with the exception of beautysnap so you need to go through them manually. I used an app called SystemPanel2, it's a great app that gives you a really complete overview of whats running on your phone and what not, it can record system processes, memory, battery and cpu usage over a period of time as well as network stats.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I couldn't be able to find those suspicious apps. I've run a bunch of virus/malwares scanner, nothing reported. I've installed SystemPanel2 and I didn't find the processes you list. I believe our phones run different firmwares. I've got mine from Gear Best.
dangerous666 said:
I couldn't be able to find those suspicious apps. I've run a bunch of virus/malwares scanner, nothing reported. I've installed SystemPanel2 and I didn't find the processes you list. I believe our phones run different firmwares. I've got mine from Gear Best.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Under your Wireless Update system app what does it say? On mine for instance is says "com.adups.fota". If your firmware is good/clean then that's a good sign that if I put a fresh stock rom on here it should be fine, I was thinking maybe all the maze alpha firmware's were affected.
My com.adups.fota "seems" to be clean.
For hibernating apps on my rooted Alpha X I use SD Maid Pro.
Under app control you set several things
A) Hibernate the app
B) Disallow start on boot
C) Look up where all the files of the app are located
D) Remove app completely
E) etc
bestunameever said:
My com.adups.fota "seems" to be clean.
For hibernating apps on my rooted Alpha X I use SD Maid Pro.
Under app control you set several things
A) Hibernate the app
B) Disallow start on boot
C) Look up where all the files of the app are located
D) Remove app completely
E) etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No such thing as clean addups I'm afraid dude.
A newly discovered malicious app is found on China-made mobile devices running the Android OS. This is a baked-in system app used to update the device’s firmware but is found to also steal personal information, among other things. A blog is recently published about this malware by Kryptowire.
Already we have had inquiries on whether we detect Adups or not. The answer to that is I believe we do. You see, the app in question, which goes by the package name of com.adups.fota, has a couple of variants. There is an older version seen around 2014 and a newer version that emerged mid-2016. This older version we detect and have done so since 2014. I can verify that this older version was indeed pre-installed on various Chinese mobile devices bought cheaply on online stores, mainly Amazon. I know this because ever since we started detecting this older version of com.adups.fota, we have received support tickets periodically about why we are detecting a system app that cannot be uninstall—I’ll get to how to address this later.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2016/11/mobile-menace-monday-adups-old-and-new/
I want to know if theirs a firmware for the Maze Alpha and the Alpha X without addups baked in, I hope so because it's a great phone otherwise.

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