'Malware' can encompass milder threats like apps that harvest personal information or trigger pop-up ads. Shocking and upsetting, right? They can get away with it because true Android viruses that take over your device are not as common as you'd expect. They just use white/blacklists to flag apps, which is ineffective and makes them little more than advertising platforms with some fake buttons. In a 2019 report from AV-Comparatives, we learned that most of the antivirus apps on Android don't even do anything to check apps for malicious behavior. Odds are, you don't need to pile on security apps because you've probably already got what you need. Security firms are usually pushing a virus scanning app of some sort, but Android is by its very nature more secure than a desktop computer. The reporting on these threats is base don fact, but they can overstate the real risks of picking up a piece of malware, and the definition of malware can be quite vague. Some of the more nasty malware can definitely, 100 percent wreck your phone.

So, online fraudsters and scammers constantly create malware in an attempt to infiltrate the Android (Opens in a new window) OS. There are billions of Android devices in the world, and that makes it a target.

Malwarebytes free for android tablet