Good point about avoiding malware. When it comes to the Market, I'll admit having been more lazy than diligent.
Still, the issues remain the same and are not merely statistical.
And yes, Android is Linux-based. But so far as I know, its development has been specifically tailored to the kinds of advertising-riddled, user-monitoring tasks that standard Linux has tended to avoid and which the Linux philosophy opposes.
I've been running Debian variants on PCs and laptops for ages and never encountered any of the issues I have with Android. A version that stayed truer to the Debian ideal might not have certain of the problems I mentioned in the earlier post.
I appreciate the fact that the required permissions for an app are listed before it can be downloaded from the market. But warning people before installation about permissions which legitimate Android software
also requires is not ideal whether people "make use of it" (i.e., look) or not. And the permissions list of information and installations in standard Linux is completely controllable, whereas unrooted carrier-tweaked commercial Android allows carriers to make a point of withholding control.
Permissions or not, I'd have thought it was time for consumer-targeted anti-viral software from Google. Security programs like Lookout promise that sort of protection already.
Unfortunately, the old desktop wisdom no longer seems practical.
That was before I happened to read
this, which echoes what you've said about checking requests for SMS send and receive permissions, phone call permissions, contacts lists permissions and, to a lesser degree, access to one's location. It also explains why conventional virus software isn't entirely effective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
There is a really simple technique to avoid most of the malware out there: verify that the permissions are reasonable. . . .
And for what it's worth: Android is Linux. Except that Android is probably more secure because it gives more fine-grained control over permissions. Yet none of that control works if people don't use it.
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