Infected smartphones: India 2nd on list

From rising up to a country that holds the third largest smartphone market in the world in 2015, India has also found a spot in top three countries with most-infected smartphone devices.

Just behind China that had maximum infected devices in 2015, a security report by Cheetah Mobile Security said, India had close to over a million infected devices last year. China had over 1.5 million infected devices followed by India, Indonesia, Russia, Malaysia, Mexico and the U.S.

The report includes details on growth of viruses, phishing sites, malwares, and infected devices across major markets, including India, data leakages, and rounds out with security predictions for 2016.

With the increase in the number of smartphones, the number of Android viruses rose and exceeded 9.5 million, which is larger than twice the total number in the past three years. The number was 2.8million in 2014, indicating a growth rate 22 per cent from the previous year. The report is cumulative data based on 567 million global monthly active users and an overall install base of almost two billion users using Cheetah Mobile's applications on their devices.

In 2015, China, India and Indonesia were the three most severely afflicted countries.

Apart from large Android user bases, another reason for these countries becoming the worst-hit ones is the third-party app markets are prevailing in these areas, the report said.

“Most third-party app markets have been contaminated by malwares due to weak monitoring of third-party vendors,” the report said.

To deter the inflictions growing in the Android market, Google is expected to take measures to improve the security of Android, the report pointed out.

“It will probably crack down on third-party app stores and restrict the permissions available to apps through the Google Play submission process,” it said. Predicting changes for mobile security in the year ahead, the report said Google app store’s availability in China market and Chinese app markets are expected to become more standardised and secure.