rocketpocket: Lookout Mobile Security is a great free antivirus for Android

Monday, October 11, 2010

Lookout Mobile Security is a great free antivirus for Android

An Android device is a sensitive thing; it's hooked up to your Google account, and there are tons of apps out there. While Android does let you know what an app will be able to access ("SD Card" etc.), it has no built-in mechanism for telling the genuinely useful applications from the ones that are out to get you.

Lookout Mobile Security is one possible solution. It's an anti-virus application that monitors all other software applicatons and scans them. It can also scan your Android device on a daily or weekly basis, and just like any other self-respecting anti-virus, it automatically updates itself online.

The anti-virus isn't the coolest thing about Lookout Mobile Security, though: It has a Find My Phone feature that can show you your Android device on a map, using the device's own GPS, without requiring any confirmation on the device itself. I'm not sure how useful that is for actually retrieving a lost device, but it's still nice to know the general vicinity of its whereabouts.

If you just happen to misplace your device somewhere in your apartment, you can also use Find My Phone to activate a "siren" from the Web - the device starts emitting an obnoxiously loud noise, which you're bound to hear if it's anywhere around.

Last but not least, Lookout Mobile Security also features a data backup solution. As a novice Android user, I'm not quite sure what that's good for - I think most of my data is backed up on my linked Google account anyway. It does allow you to automatically back up photos, which is handy indeed.