Wednesday, February 22, 2017
The best antivirus apps for Android
1. McAfee Security & Power Booster: An effective, free antivirus tool with a good set of additional features
Price when reviewed: Free; premium subscription £2.49/mth, £29.99/yr
McAfee Security is a rather weird proposition: the free app gives you
a strong feature set, but upgrading to an expensive premium licence
adds very little of substance. Subscribers get access to telephone
support and a cloud backup function for photos and other media files;
that latter feature might sound useful, but it’s limited to a miserly
2GB.
The overall package is impressive. You can PIN-protect as many apps
as you want, and set up secure profiles in which certain apps don’t
appear. There’s web protection for Chrome, and the usual anti-theft
measures that allow you to track your phone over the internet or via
SMS. You can also remotely take a photo, and receive an alert if a
different SIM is inserted into your phone; you can even set up a PIN
that makes it impossible for a thief to uninstall McAfee without
resetting the phone.
There’s also simple but smart integration with Android Wear. Not only
can you set your smartwatch to warn you when your phone loses contact,
you can also set up an alarm on the phone itself – to spook thieves –
and automatically lock the handset.
McAfee scored an impressive 99.9% in AV-Test’s latest real-time
protection test, and the same for general malware detection. It doesn’t
make any sense to pay for McAfee, but if you’re looking for a free
antivirus option it’s a great choice.
2. Bitdefender Mobile Security & Antivirus: Excellent security for those willing to pay the modest price
Price when reviewed: 99p/mth, £9.95/yr
Bitdefender doesn’t offer a free edition of its Mobile Security app.
If you’re counting the pennies then that may immediately put it out of
the running – but a subscription isn’t expensive, and it does mean you
don’t have to put up with adverts or tolerate crippled features.
On installation, you’re invited to scan your device and configure
your app-locking settings. There’s nothing very novel about the idea of
PIN-protecting selected apps, but Bitdefender offers some thoughtful
features: you can choose to automatically disable app-locking when
you’re connected to your home Wi-Fi, and optionally capture a photo of
anyone who tries to guess your app-lock PIN.
The anti-theft module similarly has a few stand-out features. You can
locate and control your phone via SMS, so you can track it down even if
it’s disconnected from the internet. You can silently call it and
listen in to its surroundings, to help you discover where it might be.
And if you’re wearing an Android Wear smartwatch, this will alert you
when your phone drops out of range, so you’re less likely to lose it in
the first place.
Along with a privacy advisor that highlights apps with wide-ranging
permissions, and a web security module, it adds up to a well-rounded
package. Best of all, Bitdefender achieved a perfect 100% score in
AV-Test’s malware tests, for both real-time scanning and offline
detection. That makes it a persuasive contender for anyone who’s willing
to pay for mobile protection – and since it installs as a fully
functional 14-day trial, you’ve nothing to lose by giving it a whirl.
3. Avast Mobile Security: A free scanner that won’t get in your way
Price when reviewed: Free; premium subscription £1.79/mth, £6.99/yr
Avast’s antivirus tool is our favourite free option for Windows – and
its Android app is just as impressive. In AV-Test’s latest tests it
blocked all known Android malware, and achieved a 99.9% real-time
protection rating. That’s better than many paid-for apps.
Avast Mobile Security also scored full marks for usability, with no measurable impact on battery life or performance – although the same can be said of all six of the security apps this month.
The free app isn’t loaded with features, but you can enable a daily
security scan, and PIN-protect your settings and Google Play, along with
one app of your choice. You can also carry out a privacy audit to
identify apps using potentially exploitable permissions – and, if you’ve
rooted your phone, you can take advantage of Avast’s custom firewall.
This lets you block internet access for apps, or set them to use Wi-Fi
only, so they don’t eat your mobile data allowance.
As on Windows, the free Android app pushes you towards other Avast
products, including the paid-for junk file cleaner and the company’s
SecureLine VPN service. The interface is also dotted with third-party
adverts; a low-cost subscription gets rid of these, and removes the
single-app PIN-protection limitation, so you can secure as many apps as
you wish. It doesn’t activate those extra Avast features, so what you’re
left with is something a little less feature-filled than McAfee – but
overall Avast provides excellent protection for little or no money.
4. AVG AntiVirus Free: Decent protection, if you can live with a few adverts
Price when reviewed: Free; premium subscription £1.79/mth, £6.99/yr
Like Avast, AVG supports its free Android antivirus app with
third-party adverts. Upgrading to the paid-for “Pro” edition is cheap,
however, and not only banishes the ads but adds app-locking and
device-locking features. You also get a neat “Camera Trap” function,
which detects when someone’s trying to unlock your phone and emails you a
photo of the culprit.
Even if you stick with the free product, AVG AntiVirus is far from a
bare offering. As well as on-installation app scanning, there’s optional
web protection to warn you if you’re visiting suspicious websites, and
the option to carry out scheduled scans on a daily or weekly basis.
A simple Wi-Fi analyser is also included, which checks that intruders
can’t access your network, and AVG’s free anti-theft service lets you
locate your phone, sound an alarm – or, if you fear it’s lost, remotely
lock it or wipe the data. Google’s free Android Device Manager offers
the same capabilities, but AVG provides a friendlier front-end. If you
have several devices to protect, you can use the AVG Zen portal to
manage multiple installations and check settings remotely.
While AVG offers a good range of features, it annoyed us by showing
adverts on the Android lockscreen. This is easy to disable, but it’s an
obnoxious thing to do in the first place. It also couldn’t match the
best security apps in AV-Test’s most recent malware tests: its real-time
protection score of 96.2% wasn’t a disaster, but it makes AVG a tough
sell when others get closer to perfect protection.
5. Kaspersky Internet Security for Android: A name you can trust, but you’ll need to pay to get the best from it
Price when reviewed: Free; premium subscription £9.99/yr
You can download and use Kaspersky’s free security app for as long as
you want, with no adverts and little in the way of pushy upsell. On the
face of it, that’s an excellent deal because Kaspersky delivers great
protection, scoring a near-flawless 99.9% in AV-Test’s most recent
tests.
What you get, though, is a minimal experience. Malware scans must be
initiated manually – even newly installed apps aren’t scanned
automatically – and the only other major free feature is an anti-theft
module, which includes the ability to take remote photos and to
automatically be notified of the phone’s new number if the SIM is
changed.
Cough up £10 for a year’s subscription – or activate the 30-day trial
option that’s hidden away in the Settings menu –and the app becomes
much more useful. Real-time malware detection kicks in, and you’re
protected not only against dodgy websites, but also from text messages
containing scams or phishing links.
There are also options to block calls and SMS messages from specific
numbers, and to conceal certain contacts within your address book, so
that anyone prying into your phone won’t find their details. These
features aren’t guaranteed to work on platforms more recent than Android
4.4 KitKat, however; if they’re important, you might want to test them
out on your own phone before paying for a licence.
While Kaspersky’s protection ratings aren’t to be sniffed at, its
free app is too stripped down to recommend. The full package is much
stronger – but it's worth bearing in mind that it doesn’t offer much
more than free alternatives such as McAfee.
6. Norton Security and Antivirus: A premium service for those with multiple devices to protect
Price when reviewed: Free; premium subscription £29.99/yr
Alongside the usual malware scanning tools, Norton Security’s
signature feature is its App Advisor. This tool – only available to
paid-up subscribers – scans the apps on your smartphone and flags any
that exhibit unwanted behaviour. That might mean leaking personal data,
tracking your location, displaying ads, automatically updating
themselves, or gobbling up battery power and mobile data. It’s a
fine-toothed approach that goes beyond merely categorising apps as safe
or unsafe.
That’s not to say that Norton won’t do that as well. Indeed, in
AV-Test’s latest round of testing, Norton was one of the few packages to
achieve an impeccable 100% protection score. It also integrates with
Google Play, inserting risk reports into app descriptions to warn you
away from dodgy wares.
While free users don’t get the full App Advisor experience, you do
get daily, weekly or monthly malware scans, plus all the expected
anti-theft features. Similarly, while interactive web protection is for
paying customers only, everyone can take advantage of Norton’s Safe
Search tool, which directs you to trustworthy websites. And while Norton
Security doesn’t include app-locking, it will direct you to Google Play
to download Norton’s free, standalone app-locking tool.
In all, it’s hard to fault Norton Security’s credentials. The problem
is the price: it costs £30 a year. That covers unlimited mobile
devices, so it might make sense for a family, but most of us will
currently be better off opting for Norton's multi-platform Security
Deluxe package – with the current 50% off deal, £30 a year buys you
protection for up to five MacOS, Windows, Android or iOS devices.
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