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Posted Monday, June 11, 2012 by John Ennis in Android General
 
 

AVG Android App Giveaway

The nice guys over at AVG, specifically Tony Anscombe, have teamed up with Android Does to giveaway ten copies of AVG Pro for Android! With the explosive growth of Android over the past three or four years, it is worth downloading AVG Pro to have the peace of mind that knowing that your data and device are secure. AVG Pro is a full-featured virus scanner for phones and tablets. With the AVG Mobilation Antivirus Pro app, you’ll receive effective, easy-to-use virus and malware protection, as well as a real-time scanner, phone locator, task killer, app locker and local device wipe through the remote management service.

There are a lot of reasons to use AVG Pro, most notable is how both effective and lightweight the app is. There is zero slowdown on my Galaxy Nexus while the app is both running in the background and actively scanning the phone. The app is designed from the ground up to have as little impact on the operation of the phone as possible. It’s pretty simple, if the app slows down the phone, then people are going to disable the app and then the phone is open to threats. There is a lot more to the app than just protecting your device from the bad guys out there, AVG Pro comes with the ability to locate your phones on Google Maps if lost or stolen,  and remotely lock and wipe your device, lock down apps with a password, and battery tune-up and storage optimization.

There’s no point in going into the myriad of threats out there that target the Android platform. While it’s true that downloading .apks from shady websites that have live wallpapers of people doing unmentionable things in unmentionable positions is not exactly safe, there are threats that find themselves leaking through to the Google Play Store. There is peace of mind that comes with knowing that there is a team of 110 million active users that have your back when you use the app.

For the most part if you are reading this website, it is assumed that you are more than a little eduacated on what you should and should not do with your device when it comes to security, but here are a couple of things that Mr. Anscombe pointed out to me:

  • Eighty-four percent use the same smartphone for both business and personal purposes. The cross over of business and personal usage means much more sensitive and confidential data is at risk and suggests that the smartphone is with them most of the time.
  • Sixty-six percent admit they keep a moderate or significant amount of personal data on their smartphones. Such personal data include email address, name, contact lists, photos, videos, anniversary and personal dates, music.
  • Sixty-seven percent of consumers surveyed say they are concerned about receiving marketing ads and promotions. However, less than half (44 percent) are concerned about having a virus attack on their smartphone when it is connected to an insecure Internet network.
  • In addition to using it as a phone, 89 percent use their smartphone for personal email and 82 percent use it for business email. A smaller percentage of consumers use their smartphones for financial transactions including payments. In fact, 38 percent of consumers use the smartphone to make payments and 14 percent use it for banking.
  • Sixty-six percent of consumers have paid at least once for an item using their smartphone. In addition, 12 percent of consumers say they have experienced a fraud attempt vis-à-vis a mobile payment scheme. Despite this fact, only six percent say they check their mobile bill or statement every month and eight percent check the statement when the bill is higher than usual.
  • Fifty-eight percent of consumers say that based on how they used the smartphone for purchases, Internet browsing and location they were targeted by marketers. Accordingly, 67 percent say they are very concerned or concerned about aggressive or abusive marketing practices.
  • Despite security risks, less than half of consumers use keypad locks or passwords to secure their smartphones. In addition, only 29 percent of consumers said they have considered installing an anti-virus product to protect their smartphone.
  • Forty-two percent of consumers who use social networking apps say they allow smartphone versions of well-known social networking applications such as Facebook to access the same key chains, passwords and log-ins that they use of their desktops, laptops or tablet.
  • Only 10 percent of consumers say they turn off Bluetooth “discoverable” status on their smartphone when not in use.

The one thing from that list that blew my mind was less than half of people lock their phones. The most fundamental thing that you can do to protect your personal data is to put a lock on your phone. Please use a numeric PIN, or pattern unlock to secure your phone. Despite some misinformation out there, pattern and PIN lock screens are secure.

AVG also scans your text messages in real time to make sure that you are not infected with social engineered malware. It can scan your phone at intervals that you define, and can advise you if you have insecure settings on your phone. It has a battery power that  saver notifies you when your battery is below the level you indicated and lets you turn-off functions not in use in order to save power. Storage optimization indicates internal and SD card usage and helps optimize storage space on your phone. This lets you move apps between the SD Card and internal storage with the help of a list of apps sorted by size and location.

The app locker is a pretty awesome feature too. If you hand your phone off to a friend and don’t want them accessing certain apps, you can lock certain apps down with a PIN. I tend to use this feature a lot for my toddler, he likes to hit the Google Play icon a lot. I’ve got that locked down good!

Overall the AVG Pro and AVG Free apps are something that I rely on everyday. The peace of mind that comes with knowing that there are over 100 million threats found everyday is one that I can’t overstate. If you don’t get AVG, get something! There are too many threats out there to ignore.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Play Store Link: Pro
Play Store Link: Free
Source: AVG White Paper

John Ennis
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John Ennis

Sr Editor at Android Does

Editor
When the USAF dropped this New Jersey boy off in Louisiana, he had no idea that the fun was just beginning. John has turned wrenches on jet engines in a Combat AGE team, raided Molten Core in the day, pwn n00bs in Battlefield 3, and can speak iOS and Android.

John has a BS degree in Culinary Arts, and is working on a Master’s in Education. Married and a father of 4 boys, John gets his screen name, Broadwayblues, from the NHL team the New York Rangers, loves the NY Giants and admits that he likes the NY Mets too. He cuddles his Galaxy Nexus at night.


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