No, smartphone owners are not being attacked by Greeks, but by trojans that mimic what dialler scams did back in the 56K modem days. “Swapi.B” is a pervasive trojan, which masks as a video file or some harmless program. Usually, the trojan is downloaded from pornographic sites. Once run, Swapi.B sends out premium SMS messages, and the smartphone user is nailed with a hefty long distance/premium text message charge. Crooks once used this con to prey on unsuspecting modem users back in the late 1990s.

Along with sending expensive premium texts, these trojans can also make long distance calls without the user’s knowledge, until he/she discovers the inflated phone bill at the end of the month. Somehow, I doubt that females are at great risk for pornographic trojans. Fundamental computer rules apply when operating smartphones. Never open a program or application from a source that you do not fully trust. Will anti-virus software need to be installed on smartphones in the near future? I sure hope not because without fast processors and plenty of RAM, having an anti-virus program run in the background is a painful experience. I confess that I have not installed an anti-virus application on my Windows computer since Y2K. Remember Y2K?

Source: CNN