With all the news about applications with malware hidden inside applications found on the Android market, some have been calling out for Google to become a little less lenient on what they let in to their official store and do some real vetting, but is it Google that needs to do this or should we as Android owners take the responsibility ourselves?
Google prides the Android Store as a way up and coming developers can quickly create and publish applications and begin making money straight away. To be able to do this Google have to put a lot of trust in developers and hope they create something not only original, but also well thought out, graphically rich, but most importantly free from virus’s or malware.
Now, of course with this open system some less than trustworthy people have taken advantage and of the situation and released some nasty little bugs in to the Android ecosystem, but does this mean we should demand a more locked down store with Google acting as big brother?
No, is the simple answer!
Pretty much all of us use Google as our search engine, but how would we like it if they started to vet each and every website they sent their robots and spiders to crawl? Obviously some websites don’t want to be viewed by most of us, but is it really Google’s job to decide what we are able to see.
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Ok you might think I’m going off the point here, but those same websites Google allows us to use our common sense while viewing may also have programs which can be installed to our computers, and at least a small percentage will have a virus or some sort of malware, but like most adults we use our common sense and decided if we think it is safe to install those programs.
What about the Android store? Shouldn’t we just apply the same common sense we use while browsing the web to when we browse the Android store?
If an application is offering something for free which seems to good to be true, I would suggest avoiding it. Also applications of an adult nature should be avoided, there are plenty of websites for that, which will play just fine on your Flash supporting Android device, installing a dedicated application seems a bit of a security risk.
Be vigilant when installing 3rd party SMS and email clients, in fact when trying to install your Android phone or tablet will most likely give you a warning explaining these applications may be able to record everything you type such as passwords and credit card numbers! Again, it might be best to avoid them.
In conclusion it’s a big bad world out there, it’s a big bad internet and unfortunately some of that has spilled over to the Android store, but with a bit of common sense and through checking (read the comments next to the applications as an indicator to if they are trustworthy or not) we should be easily able to avoid getting our Android devices infected by the next ‘Zombie’ virus.
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