Android's on-device malware checker has poor detection rate of 15.32%

[GauravAgr]

To quantify the effectiveness of this service, we leverage our prior Android Malware Genome Project and check whether the collected Android malware samples can be detected. We conducted our experiments on November 30, 2012, by using the same dataset of 1260 samples (belonging to 49 different families) that has been widely shared within the research community, including Google. Our study involves semi-automated installation of them on a few of latest Nexus 10 tablets (16GB) running Android 4.2 (build number:JOP40C). The detailed detection results are shown in Table 1. Overall, among these 1260 samples, 193 of them can be detected, indicating a low detection rate of 15.32%.

Link: http://www.cs.ncsu.edu/faculty/jiang/appverify/

[Scorbing]

I have found that most people that get infected with malware on Android devices are people who download every stupid little unknown app there is and put it on their phone without first checking the validity of its source.

[Detection]

I`ll install just about any .apk I find floating around and have never ended up with any problems, all my accounts still belong to me and no-one has reported spam coming from my email addresses and I wouldn't be naive enough to do anything like banking on Android anyway (Tablet so no issues with premium rate numbers, I might be more careful if it was a phone)

Just make sure you read the permissions the app asks for before you install it, a prime example was a member posted his news feed app here the other day and when I read it wanted to send emails without the owner knowing, read personal data and basically have access to your entire personal life, I cancelled the install

[Growled Member]

I'm not much of an app downloader but many of my friends are and they've never reported any trouble. They are just lucky, I guess. I do have a cousin that seemingly got something but no one was ever sure.

[ashpowell]

I've downloaded tonnes of apps, for years and never came across anything slightly malicious. The most worst thing I've came across is an ad popup on the notification bar.

[ramzorz]

Imagine third party antivirus on your android? That's a bit embarrassing... I honestly wouldn't be surprised if one already exists. The operating system is bloated already as it is.

[Growled Member]

Imagine third party antivirus on your android? That's a bit embarrassing... I honestly wouldn't be surprised if one already exists. The operating system is bloated already as it is.

There exists three that I know of. Actually security experts say we should install antivirus on every platform.

[n_K]

Imagine third party antivirus on your android? That's a bit embarrassing... I honestly wouldn't be surprised if one already exists. The operating system is bloated already as it is.

How is that embarrising? apple's app store has had malware passed as official apps before too...

[sanctified Veteran]

Imagine third party antivirus on your android?

There are five antivirus for Android as we speak. I have one of them installed. ESET Mobile Security.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

Imagine third party antivirus on your android? That's a bit embarrassing... I honestly wouldn't be surprised if one already exists. The operating system is bloated already as it is.

there's been antivirus apps for android for over a year now, here's a list of them http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-free-antivirus-app-android.htm

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

There are lots of antivirus solutions for Android. Some common names include ESET, Kaspersky, Avast, Norton, McAfee, AVG, Comodo, and Avira, and there are plenty of others. As for the practicality, I honestly have no idea. But I run Avast on my phone without any problems, and it has some nice anti-theft features as well.

[GauravAgr]

The main problem is that one can get malware even while installing from Google Play. Malware in an .apk is understandable in such open platform.