A real bugbear of mine are the surveys and press releases put out by mobile “security” vendors that seem intended to do little more than scare people into buying their products. They attempt to whip up a frenzy by playing on people’s experiences with viruses on their PCs, then ignore the reality that it’s actually really quite difficult to get a virus on your mobile phone.

The latest one claims “three quarters of mobile phone users are aware that malware can infect a mobile device via Bluetooth - but fail to have security software installed.” Maybe that’s because that 3/4 of people realize they don’t need it, and that the threat is largely an invented one?

Then comes the attempt at balance (but only as a segue for more FUD):

“While the mobile threat is low at present, it’s only a matter of time before Internet criminals start utilizing the growing potential that smartphone usage presents to them,” warned Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure. “So far there have been about 400 mobile viruses detected, but as smartphones replace PCs as the dominant Internet platform, we can expect this figure to rise.” … The low amount of security software installed on smartphones coupled with the rapidly increasing volume of these devices make them a very vulnerable target for hackers.

As our T9 friends would say, what a bunch of shiv. To the 86 percent of respondents who haven’t bothered with mobile security software, nice job on not buying into the hype.