What You Need to Know About Cell Phone Viruses and How to Avoid Them

Viruses are the things that everyone hopes won't find a way onto their computer. Depending on the type of virus and the kind of anti-virus protecting your computer is equipped with, a virus can completely ruin your computer or do very little damage. Now that all the mobile phone companies have come up with all these smart phones, viruses have been finding their way onto cell phones, as well as computers.

The first known incident of a cell phone virus was in 2004 and was named Cabir. This virus spread from phone to phone through the bluetooth capabilities. Those who had the virus and were using their bluetooth for whatever reason gave the virus to others around them who were also using bluetooth unknowingly. Luckily, this virus did very little damage to the cell phone, but other viruses have developed with more potential for damage.

Since then, there have been many cell phone viruses detected that have posed a greater threat to cell phone users. Some viruses have been sent through bluetooth, but they also have been able to go through text messages and Internet downloads. Some of the viruses have been very similar to Trojan horse viruses that are commonly found on the computer. A cell phone virus has the potential to cost people a great deal of money. A virus known as RedBrowser has been costing people a great deal of money by making random phone calls. Another potential danger of a cell phone virus is that it could retrieve personal information about the owner. There is no telling what could happen to your phone is if contracts a virus, but most of the time it will cause some form of damage, and maybe even break your phone completely.

Prevention

Now that you know the damage that could be caused to your phone by a cell phone virus, you may want to take some sort of action to protect your phone from this. There are many anti-virus programs available for phones, and this is one of the best ways to make sure that your phone stays virus free. Security programs for the phone are easy to find and most are inexpensive, so it's a small price to pay to make sure that your nice, expensive, smart phone doesn't break and leave you phone less.

Another way to avoid a cell phone virus, is to turn your bluetooth off when you are not using it. Most people use their bluetooth so that they can use the hands-free feature on their phone, others use it to share files, but whatever you're doing, you only need the bluetooth feature on when you're actually doing those things. If you don't want to turn the bluetooth off, there are always options on your phone that allow you to hide your device or make it undiscoverable. This means that others won't be able to pass on the virus to you because your phone will not show up on the pairing list.

One of the easiest ways to make sure that your phone doesn't somehow catch a virus is to be careful when using the web browsing feature on your phone. Make sure that you do not download any files if you aren't sure of what they are. Also be careful when downloading games, as some viruses have been spread that way as well.