Are you using Windows to read this? You might need to sit down for this one, but billions of windows users are being infected with a virus right now! Want to know the name? It’s called public relations. Some call the virus “spin” since it’s confusingly negative to some but positive to others. Fact number one: All software can be compromised.

Fact number two: Most are infected because they have made the wrong decisions. Pirated music and movies are full of viruses. That’s why most computers are infected. Smartphones? Well their versions of malware are different. Mobile viruses infect us because we didn’t read all of the permissions on Android or the Apple engineers let them slip past in the filtering stage. Rarely will an average app do something it’s not supposed to do. Usually an app that is made to something questionable will do questionable things in the background too.

As long as we just use the Google market or Amazon appstore, we can be relatively safe. Why? Becuase just like Apple, once bad software is found it’s deleted from the store and your phone if need be. Going outside of those boundaries invite trouble. What about all of the reports about android being unsafe?

Android, IOS, Apple and Linux are all similar in security code. With Android and Apple operating systems you have to give software permissions to work. With IOS and Linux you nor software  have permissions to do anything bad by default. There are ways to get around that but if you do, you are asking for it anyway. Windows XP freely gives you and programs permissions, that’s why it is the most infected operating system ever.

However most companies still use Windows XP. Why? Because XP still works well enough to get the job done. Sure it’s full of security flaws but they are flaws that won’t be exploited unless you put yourself in that situation. Public relations will have you believe that only Android has viruses… Why? Is it for a particular business slant? Is it because  of perception? Mac users are pictured as clean, upstanding citizens. Microsoft users are pictured as either corporate(boring) or consumers(not knowing) or criminals (hackers and virus makers).

Is this the truth? No, but stereotypes are sometimes stronger than the truth. Ask any Cyber Security rep and watch him chuckle. It’s up to you in the end, control yourself and you will control your phone .

via Chris DiBona – Google+ – Sometimes I read an article about open source that drives….