GoKawiilUsing antivirus software on every device you own made sense in the early days of personal computing, but modern smartphones are built to be more secure. Both Apple and Google include extensive protections that make phones much harder targets for traditional malware than older PCs were.
Today's biggest smartphone threat often isn't malware at all. It's phishing texts, fake websites and account takeover scams. That's why there are more effective ways to improve your security than buying antivirus software for your mobile device.
Your phone is already doing a lot of the work
Both iPhones and Android devices are designed to keep apps separated from one another. An app can usually access only the information and features you've specifically allowed it to use. If a malicious app does slip through, it's generally much harder for it to poke around the rest of your device than it would have been on an older computer.
Apple takes an especially restrictive approach. Apps must come through the App Store (though they're expanding that in certain regions) where they go through a review process before they're published. Apple also tightly controls what apps can do once they're installed. For some people, the stance may feel too controlling, but from a security standpoint, the approach has its advantages.
That same approach also limits what antivirus apps can do on iPhones. Unlike antivirus software on a Windows PC, mobile security apps generally can't scan the operating system itself because Apple restricts that level of access. There isn't much point in running an antivirus program that can't even scan your device.
Android gives its users more freedom, which comes with a little more risk. It's possible to install apps from outside the Google Play Store, which is known as sideloading. That's also where many Android malware infections begin. But Android includes several built-in safeguards including Google Play Protect, app permission controls and regular security updates that patch newly discovered vulnerabilities.
As an aside, Google Play Store periodically hides apps that no longer meet current security standards, which adds yet another layer of protection.
None of this means phones are impossible to compromise. Security researchers discover new flaws all the time, and bad actors are constantly looking for ways to exploit them. But compared with the computers many of us used a decade or so ago, today's smartphones are much tougher targets. Instead, many cybercriminals focus their efforts elsewhere.
Your accounts are a bigger target than your phone
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