Antivirus for Android

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on March 12, 2013

There is no official barrier that can prevent viruses, malware, or spyware from entering your mobile device. Countless programs are on the market that claim they can protect your device from malicious threats, but very few of them actually deliver a valuable tool. Antivirus for Android is yet another program that promises, but fails to deliver.

The setup for Antivirus for Android goes quite easily and there are no advanced settings to deal with. However, the first hurdle occurs when the program loads. A user agreement pops up on the screen, asking for further permissions on the device. It is a quite extensive document that you must agree to before continuing with the program. It is fairly rare to encounter these agreements in applications and feels disconcerting. Once we agreed to the terms, the program force-closed on our Acer Iconia. We couldn't get it to work on this device even after repeated attempts, so we tested it on a Galaxy Nexus instead, and it finally worked. The device was scanned using the simple user interface. The application found a virus during the extremely fast scan. An offer was then made to eliminate the threat, but first you must pay for the removal feature upgrade. When we tested the same device with another, well-known program, it found no problems. The device tested has not had any symptoms of malware or viruses. It is inconclusive as to whether the problem really existed.

Antivirus for Android raises too many questions regarding its reliability and performance. It crashed on one device multiple times, but worked on another. Both were using the Android 4.0 operating system. Users must pay to remove viruses that the program detects, but it cannot be verified that those threats really exist.