What’s a mobile phone virus?

A mobile phone virus, or mobile malware - malicious mobile software - is a computer virus specifically adapted for the mobile phone environment and designed to spread from one vulnerable phone to another.A virus is a program code that replicates by being copied to another program. Viruses can be transmitted as attachments to an email or in a download file. Some viruses take effect as soon as their code is executed; other viruses can lie dormant. A virus that replicates by resending itself as an email attachment or as a part of a network message is known as a worm.Viruses can range from benign to quite harmful; they can erase data from the infected phone or send fake messages purporting to be from the phone’s owner. How prevalent are mobile phoneviruses? The current security risk from mobile phone viruses and worms is low.Until many more ‘smart phones’ or PDAs[1]are in use, and users of these phones are regularly exchanging executable files, the risk will remainlow. The mobile industry takes the threat of viruses very seriously and is continually monitoring its networks and working to protect users from any future risk from mobile phone viruses. There are also some simple measures that individual users can implement to protect themselves.