With smartphones becoming more popular in South Africa, many Symbian phone users risk having their phone data compromised when accessing popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Without adequate mobile security software, mobile phones that run on a Symbian or Windows mobile operating system become vulnerable to the over 600 known smartphone viruses.
The reality is that mobile users, like PC or laptop users, need to protect their handsets from viruses, malware and other malicious attacks by installing anti-virus software to protect their data.
“With more and more people sending e-mail and transferring data over their phones, including personal information such as banking details, it would seem that installing mobile virus protection would be a no-brainer,” says Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of ESET Southern Africa.
“The adoption of smartphones during the past few years and their continuous growth in the future could easily offer more possibilities for mobile viruses to spread.”
These threats have ranged in seriousness from relatively harmless viruses like the Duts virus - a Windows Mobile virus that simply asked for permission to be spread - and the Brador, a backdoor virus that gives hackers access to files before deleting them.
“To feel confident that your valuable cellphone data is protected from malicious software while accessing the mobile Internet or social media sites, you should invest in mobile anti-virus software that does not only block malware for smartphones, but has an anti-theft feature that allows you to delete valuable data before it can be accessed by a thief.”
Now available for beta testing, ESET Mobile Antivirus for Symbian - anti-virus software for Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones - boasts a range of features to protect smartphones from these threats. Anti-theft features such as Remote Wipe allows a mobile user to delete confidential data on a smartphone via an SMS command.
Other features of the ESET Mobile Antivirus for Symbian include a fully integrated firewall for incoming and outgoing communication, MMS/SMS anti-spam that include black/whitelisting and blocks unwanted messages and SIM matching that enabled users to define a list of trusted SIM cards on a certain device.
Says van Vlaanderen: “The benefit of the ESET Mobile Antivirus is that it offers proactive protection by detecting known and unknown mobile malware, a light footprint as it only needs 500kb to install and 1MB of ram when scanning, streamlined technology that enables faster scanning speeds and SMS anti-spam to filter unwanted text messages to the spam folder.”
“As personal and business use of smartphones become more sophisticated, so should the protection of the data being shared online or via MMS/SMS and smartphone users should put the best protective measures in place to protect valuable phone data.”
The ESET Mobile Antivirus for Symbian software can be downloaded at http://beta.eset.com/mobile.
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ESET Southern Africa
ESET is a global provider of security software for enterprises and consumers and is dedicated to delivering instant, comprehensive protection against evolving computer security threats. ESET's products rank among the world's most advanced security solutions, proven by multiple prestigious awards. ESET NOD32 Antivirus consistently achieves the highest accolades in all types of comparative testing, and is the heart of the virus and spyware detection in ESET Smart Security. ESET Smart Security is an integrated anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and personal firewall solution that combines accuracy, speed and an extremely small system footprint to create the most effective security solution in the industry. Both products have an extremely efficient code base, allowing faster scanning that doesn't slow down computers or networks. Sold in more than 160 countries, ESET has worldwide production headquarters in Bratislava, Slovakia and worldwide distribution headquarters in San Diego, California. The ESET Southern Africa head office is situated in Cape Town. Please visit http://www.eset.co.za.