Free Wi-Fi is great. It’s convenient when you are away from your home network and want to connect to the Internet using your mobile phone, and it saves money and data. But there is a dark side. Unsecured networks can expose you to a hacker who can easily read your messages, steal your logins, passwords, and […]
Many people sell their used smartphones but fail to ensure their personal data is wiped away. A year and half ago, Avast mobile security researchers bought 20 used phones from online consumer-to-consumer sites, like eBay and Amazon, in the USA. Using easily available recovery software, they were able to access more than 40,000 personal photos, emails, […]
Avast Mobile Security researchers camped out at the Barcelona Airport, threw up a few fake Wi-Fi hotspots, and waited to see who would connect. That’s already an interesting premise for an experiment, but this was the weekend when attendees of Mobile World Congress, “the world’s biggest and most influential mobile event” were arriving, making […]
A year and half ago, Avast mobile security researchers bought 20 used phones from online consumer-to-consumer sites, like eBay and Amazon, in the USA. Using easily available recovery software, they were able to access more than 40,000 personal photos, emails, and text messages.
Since then, smartphone technology has progressed and numerous educational articles have been published to inform people about cleaning their phones before selling, so we wanted to see what would happen if we did a similar experiment now. This time, our researchers bought phones from pawn shops: Five devices each in New York, Paris, Barcelona, and Berlin — and again, used widely available free recovery software to detect the data found on the devices.
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Travelers often connect to free Wi-Fi to save money. image via www.shbarcelona.com
That’s already an interesting premise for an experiment, but this was the weekend when attendees of Mobile World Congress, “the world’s biggest and most influential mobile event” were arriving, making this not only interesting but fun! You would think with such a savvy group that the results would be rather ho-hum, but think again!
Thousands of smartphone users threw caution to the wind and connected to one of Avast’s bogus Wi-Fi hotspots, risking being spied on and hacked by cybercriminals.
Just like their closets, women have more clutter on their phones than men. Our free Avast Cleanup app for Android has removed more than 9,000 petabytes of photos, videos and other unwanted files, to make room for data that matters, since its launch during last year’s Mobile World Congress. In a surprising twist, an analysis of […]
Our free Avast Cleanup app for Android has removed more than 9,000 petabytes of photos, videos and other unwanted files, to make room for data that matters, since its launch during last year’s Mobile World Congress. In a surprising twist, an analysis of the anonymized data cleaned from Android smartphones showed us that men keep their phones cleaner than women. 🙂
On average, men eliminate 169 MB of data per clean, while women average only 73 MB per cleaning. Our data also shows that the space on women’s phones is more occupied than the space on men’s devices. Men use just over half of the space on their mobiles, whereas women typically use 13 percent more of their mobile storage space. Additionally, men fill their storage space with apps, while women have more photos and videos stored.
The differences between men and women’s cleaning and storing behaviors are surprising, but could have simple explanations. It could be that men are less attached to their content and get rid of files easier, or that men use their devices more often than women do — therefore accumulating more unnecessary files that later need to be deleted.
Unused apps account for three-fourths of the data cleaned by Avast Cleanup. The second most cleaned items that Avast has expunged are media files such as old photos or videos.
Data from our Avast Cleanup reveals that 25 – 34-year-olds seem to be the most active mobile users. Users in that age group clean an average of 261 MB of data per cleaning session. Surprisingly, 18 – 24-year-olds clean only 134 MB of data per Avast Cleanup use, even though they are the age group with the least amount of space on their devices. Our Avast Cleanup statistics show that 18 – 24-year-olds have only 35 percent of space left on their devices, which is the least amount of space compared to the other age groups.
Interestingly, we found that Cleanup users with a Sony device discard the most data with 394 MB removed per average clean, while Samsung owners typically clean 109 MB.
Mobile malware is a growing threat. Banking, shopping, email. We do things on our phones that used to only be done on our desktop PC. Hackers know valuable data is stored on people’s phones, and they increasingly find new ways to attack mobile users. The most common mobile threats are adware packaged as fun gaming […]
Banking, shopping, email. We do things on our phones that used to only be done on our desktop PC. Hackers know valuable data is stored on people’s phones, and they increasingly find new ways to attack mobile users.
These devices have information on them that is valuable to hackers
The most common mobile threats are adware packaged as fun gaming apps that provide little value and spams users with ads. SMS attacks are malware which sends unauthorized premium SMS or makes premium-service phone calls. This results in a large monthly bill for the user and a significant source of revenue for cybercrooks.
The most aggressive malware is mobile ransomware. Simplocker was the first Android ransomware to encrypt user files, and now there are thousands of variations that make it nearly impossible to recover the encrypted data on a smartphone.
Privacy is an issue with vulnerabilities such as Certifi-gate and Stagefright, both of which can be exploited to spy on users. Certifi-gate put approximately 50 percent of Android users at risk, and Stagefright made nearly 1 billion Android devices vulnerable to spyware.
Avast Mobile Security for Android scans mobile devices and secures them against infected files, phishing, malware, and spyware. The app provides people with the most advanced mobile malware protection available, now even faster with Avast’s leading cloud scanning engine. Install Avast Mobile Security for free!
New machine learning-powered malware detection technology identifies zero-day and transformational malware threats at the processor level. Avast Software was selected by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. as the lead mobile security service to integrate Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Smart Protect, a behavioral analysis-based, anti-malware technology that utilizes technology from the Qualcomm® Zeroth™ Machine Intelligence Platform to detect mobile malware threats […]