Dubai: Etisalat has urged cell phone users to install special software on their phones to prevent them from becoming infected with viruses.
The telecommunications company has also urged cell phone users to be extra vigilant before they open applications or attachments sent to their phones.
The warnings come following the return of the CommWarrior virus, which was widely reported by UAE cell phone users early last year.
Ahmad Bin Ali, Etisalat's Vice-President for Corporate Communications, said: "We encourage people to put anti-virus software on their cell phone.
"Also, they should be sure what they have received [on their phone] before they save it. They should be sure it is a safe programme or file."
Bin Ali said as well as MMS, Bluetooth was another common way of picking up cell phone viruses.
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He said if users were not sure about applications or attachments received through Bluetooth or MMS, they should delete them without opening them.
He said: "These viruses do not affect all cell phones. They happen to mobiles with applications for these things."
Recipients with 'smartphone' handsets that use the Symbian operating system are at risk of being infected with the virus, although not all such smartphones will run the application.
Cabir virus
Other phones will get a message telling them to download the MMS from the Etisalat website, using a specific message ID and password.
One person who received CommWarrior said he thought it was safe to open the MMS because it came from a colleague's cell phone. "I opened it because I thought it was something my colleague wanted me to check," he said.
In a bid to stop the phone from continuing to send the message, he has removed the SIM card and transferred it to another handset. The original handset has been taken to a cell phone store to have the virus removed.
Another cell phone phone virus that has previously been reported in the UAE is Cabir, which launches a file that makes the mobile's screen display the word Caribe.
Those who received this virus on their phones reported that, as with CommWarrior, their phones began sending messages to other phones. Cabir also runs the battery down quickly.
As well as sending themselves to other phones selected from the handset's address book, Nokia has warned that viruses such as CommWarrior can spread themselves by attempting to reply with an infected MMS to all incoming messages.
Alternatively, the viruses sometimes send copies of themselves to cell phone devices that have the Bluetooth connection set to 'visible' mode
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2 comments:
very nice post... customers of latest mobile phones are really in need of antiviruses that can prevent their cellphones from viruses. I have recently purchased a Commander Mobile Antivirus from Youpark.com for my Nokia 6630. I am very much satisfied with that and i hope other users will also get benefit of such applications.
thanks for dropping by! yes there sure is a lot of virii moving around from one mobile to another just like a pc infecting another host. now i wonder if we will be required to auto update the antivirus definition in a mobile phone just like a pc??? i think we'll end up using tons and tons of bandwidth just to get them updated every day!!!
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