Posted: 11/20/2010 9:51:52 PM EDT
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I let a buddy of mine attach his droid to my computer...is it possible to catch a virus this way?
The reason I ask is that his computer died (supposedly of a virus) a while back. He did this several weeks ago, and I have not been totally shutting down my computer for that time (use sleep mode). Malwarebytes and Avast show no results, and I have had nothing odd happen since. Just concerned that when I restart my computer I may get a nasty surprise. |
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I suppose it's possible but very unlikely. Someone would have to create the virus specifically to go on to the phone (probably from a computer) and then from the phone to other computers. Most people make the viruses to attack computers and specific operating systems. There are some out there for phones, but statistically it's really small compared to computers, and then those dont do anything to phones. Viruses are created to infect as many computers as possible so they tend to focus on the larger groups of users for something. This is why you see less for Apple. It's not that they are virus proof, but that there are less mac users thus less people motivated to attack them. Compared to say, Windows users, people using smart phones, and more so people that connect their smart phones to computers, and then people using android based (linux) smart phones that connect them to their computers (very likely a different OS) is a very small percentage of the population at large.
If he was copying things from his SD card to your hard drive, I suppose there would be more of a concern, but if the files were known and trusted items, I'd still think it not to be a problem, and a virus scanner should catch it anyway. If he was tethering or taking files, no biggie. Dont worry bout it, and considering you haven't had any issues I think you're in the clear. |
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Second Tuesday is "patch day". The patches have been pretty light duty recently. You should reboot your computer more. It may work OK now, but it will work better and more consistently if you do. Make sure you disable autorun on inserted disks and drives and you'll prevent 99% of what you can catch with a mounted phone. I'd say you are clean. Don't let people who get viruses connect to your stuff. (Good advice in may aspects of life.)
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