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Stephanie asked: “I have a Samsung Galaxy S8. I want to know if I need to have additional virus protection on my cell phone. I heard you talk to that lady about defender on her computer. If I do need it, what’s the best one?”
Stephanie, you don’t really need additional protection on Samsung S8. Smartphones are basically small computers, but they’re organized differently, if you will.
On a computer, malicious software may be able to access local storage with files and settings. On phones, apps are what’s called “sandboxed.”
The concept is that each app is like a child playing in their own sandbox, they can grab anything within the sandbox, but they can’t reach outside of it.
That means that they can have their own files and their own settings, but if they want anything outside of their little domain, they have to ask the operating system to get it.
That’s done through specific requests that you need to explicitly authorize, in other words, you must give an app permission to access, for example, your contacts, or your photos. There’s no option to let them access other app data so they can infect it.
There is an exception to this: rooted phones can get around sandboxes and permissions. They do things you couldn’t do on a stock phone by acting more like a computer and letting users access more of the system.
As long as you keep your phone updated so it’s patched against the latest threats, unrooted so that the sandboxing system stays intact, and you’re careful about the permissions you grant apps, you should be safe.