I recently upgraded to an Android phone and a friend of mine asked me if I had put any antivirus software on it. My first reaction was “of course not…why?” And then she put the fear of malware and viruses in my head by mentioning that the Android operating system is a variant of Linux and since the Android marketplace is completely wide open, there was a good chance I could download an app that had malware or a virus. It made sense to me, at least at first. After all, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to clear malware off my laptop in the past year. Far too many times, believe me.

So I downloaded a free antivirus package specifically for Android phones. It took a few minutes to do and was completely painless. It Felt pretty safe and like I knew what I was doing.

Then I did the research…and found out from numerous forums that it really isn’t necessary. Yes, there are some viruses out there for Linux, but so few and far between that the general consensus is it’s not necessary at this time. The few apps I’ve read about that you need to watch out for have to do with online banking and are more of a phishing scam than a virus. Since I’m not planning on doing my banking from my phone, I decided I was better off without the app on my phone, so I uninstalled it today.

However, I don’t assume that every app is safe and will follow two basic rules of thumb:

1. If a cool app has very few ratings and even fewer downloads, I’m staying away from it.
2. I’ll be checking and installing all updates by HTC to fix any exploit in the code

I’ll let you know how it goes.