The generation that we are living in heavily relies on mobile devices. The use of this little magnificent device is used by millions, all over the world. From day-to-day friendly conversations, small businesses to the large corporations all of them use mobile phones. Unfortunately, this little device, just like any other device has its misuse as well. That does not necessarily mean the fault is mobile devices, but it is the user’s intent. In fact, a mobile device is one of the most secured devices out there for public use. Still not so secure that this is impossible to exploit.
With this in mind, let’s see some of the symptoms you may come across when your device is infected with malware for various intentions.
The vulnerabilities of mobile devices
Mobile devices still connect to the open Internet and things can always go wrong in various ways. Typically, major downloads on mobile devices are the applications or apps, anyway, you call them. These applications often are downloaded from the vendor or manufacturer-specific market, like Google Play store, Apple store, Microsoft store, and so on.
All of the apps are stored there, are verified by such a store, and are safe to download. Meaning, safe from malware or any such mischievous apps. Things can go wrong when the user downloads an app from third-party unverified sources, or download anything from a website that may contain malware that can infest the moment you open it up.
The best way to fight these scenarios is to develop curiosity, instinct, and consistency. Having them can help you when you will look for the symptoms, risks, and clues. Now we are going to take a look into those symptoms, risks, and clues. But one thing let me put right out first, the risks you will read here is not “That’s it” but this malware can become incredibly playful, creative, and complex to even catch. But somehow it will always give you some form of clues.
Unexpected usage of resources
This is the very first clue if you seem to have no explanation for why suddenly your device’s resources are used in large chunks, and almost to the point that it slows down your device and even the network. Well, if you notice, malware is just software like your apps installed. They need the resources to run like any other app from your device. So, likewise, if they need to do some heavy lifting, they need an equal amount of resources as well.
Also, since heavy resource usage can typically be fixed with a soft reset, the problem goes away and we tend to leave the issue as it is, until it takes over the device again. Always be vigilant of such an unexpected pattern of resource usage, this is crucial if you are or your employees using a company device, as well as their own device, and bringing it into the company. Target phones can be used to extract or affect company resources or lead to tragic loss.