What’s with the mobile virus scaremongering at ZDNet?

I mean you can’t blame virus companies for talking up the dangers of mobile viruses - they want to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt among us mobile users. Then we’ll rush out and and pay them to install their products on our mobiles.

But why do ZDNet want this too, I wonder? They consistently release FUD stories about mobile virii, which turn out to be nothing more than press releases reprinted from virus companies. Back in February, I wrote about one of their stories which described an “infestation” of Cabir in Australia, which turned out that one phone was infected.

Now we have headlines trumpeting that a company has been “struck down” by CommWarrior, another mobile virus that transmits itself by Bluetooth and MMS. Now, in my book “struck down” is pretty strong stuff. It implies workers unable to work, massive data loss and huge productivity problems. Or am I interpreting the English language wrongly?

But what actually happened in the un-named company?

One of the company employees received CommWarrior.B to their phone, and then activated it by opening the program. “The virus then sent itself to every address in the address book, it was opened by more employees, who activated it and it spread”

Note, they don’t say how many phones were infected, as it was probably only a couple. If it was 100’s, you can be sure that they’d have shared the number.

As it happens, this is very easy to sort out anyway and cool heads prevailed, with their operator shutting down MMS and the phones having Bluetooth switched off. This doesn’t sound like the company being “struck down” does it?

In fact, the story concludes with the classic:

“Fortunately this did not affect the operation of the company.”

As I’ve written before, you have to be pretty determined to install a virus on your phone - or pretty stupid. You’re asked twice if you want to install it (ie something that you don’t know what it is and that has suddenly arrived on your phone), so if you’re smart enough to operate a smartphone, you should be smart enough to understand that this isn’t a great idea.

It’s like the manual virus being circulated by the Stupid Society, by email. On opening the email, you’re asked to delete all your files.

I’m not suggesting that mobile virii won’t be a problem at some point. It’s just that we’re nowhere near that point yet, despite what ZDNet and the virus companies would like you to believe.

But back to ZDNet. My question is; is this just sloppy journalism or has their editorial been infected by the commerce virus?