[Prestidigitweeze]

It would be nice if the conversation only involved statistics. Sadly, I don't think it does.

The Android Market is relatively free and open, and while that's good in many ways, we now have to be as careful about what we download to our phones and tablets as we have been with Windows PCs.

Last week, I grabbed a slightly decent skin for Launcher Pro called Galaxy S2 Plus. I was thinking about collecting variables for my UI color scheme at the time and not much else. An hour later, I noticed the top of my desktop and the left side of the alert bar were each taken up with spammed messages about gambling and viagra. I'm afraid to meet the man who would find that useful.

This wasn't a matter of wallpaper animation -- the skin had actually taken over the part of the bar that tells you whether or not you've received messages and was using it as flashing spam ticker tape. It was also registering false alerts every few moments. Since I'd grabbed about ten skins and updated six or seven apps in that one session, it took me a moment to track down the cause and uninstall it.

[Update: I'd originally reported a half-dozen instances of seemingly anonymous SMS spam as possibly being connected to the above issue. Talking with Sprint over the next day led to no callback at first and then the revelation the sender was "probably" a partner of theirs. They pushed an update to me removing CIQ and much of their proprietary software and I've received nothing spamlike since.]

One problem is that, due to Google's proprietary model and the domineering concerns of cellphone providers, we're forced to suffer a plethora of scripts. Google wants you to think its software is free, but in the ad-free sense, it really never has been.

At this point, Android needs effective antivirus software.

I have to agree that iOS and Linux seem the best platforms for avoiding venal complications. If in a year's time you run into me and find I'm carrying an iPhone, this would be the only reason: Comparatively less advertising and malware. None of the platforms are safe, but Apple's walled garden is actually useful in this one way.

I'd love it if we had Linux Mobile as a choice, but then you'd hear about casual users locking themselves out of their own hardware or being unable to reformat because they'd inadvertently password-protected a 700MB partition in their phones' internal memory. Scary thought: Accidental line commands on a touch screen bouncing around in your pocket.