What are the biggest threats mobile users face today?

a. Device loss or theft. People are storing more and more
private and confidential ­information on their smartphones:
­documents, photos, files, banking account details. But,
being human, we sometimes lose our phones or it gets
stolen. Very often the risk of getting this data into the
wrong hands is even worse than your expensive device
being stolen.

b. SMS spam and ad calls. Not actually a “threat” in its
initial meaning, but a great annoyance.

c. Mobile cybercrime and fraud. Since smartphones are
becoming more common – cybercriminals and fraudsters are
starting to target mobile users. The latest trend here is Trojan
software secretly sending SMSs from your cellphone to a premium
cost numbers.

What is the difference between the threats faced by PC users
and those faced by smartphone users?

The main difference here is a complete unawareness of mobile threats.
Everybody knows that it’s dangerous to open suspicious attachments in
emails or visit inappropriate websites when using your PC. But all this
changes when people switch to smartphones, which are ­essentially
computers, just smaller.

Mobile banking is growing in popularity. Do you have any practical
tips for users to avoid threats associated with mobile banking?

We don’t know of examples of malware targeting mobile banking yet. But
unfortunately all the ­technological preconditions are in place for it to happen.
Therefore we can recommend either don’t access your accounts with some
considerable amount of funds from your smartphone, or to use one of the
time-proven anti-virus products.

How often is the software updated and how large is an average update?

Kaspersky Mobile Security updates its AV database on a regular basis. But the volume of updates is not that big – less than 50Kb a week.

How does Mobile Security protect users against these threats?

When protected by Kaspersky Mobile Security, smartphone user is able of doing a lot of amazing things. For example if a user cannot find his phone it is possible to locate it. Just send an SMS with a special command to your number and get smartphones location sent to your email as a Google Maps link. If it’s clear that your it was stolen it is possible to remotely block it or even wipe out all sensitive data on it.