Norton Mobile Security Delivers App Privacy Protection

Symantec has released the latest version of Norton Mobile Security, which delivers powerful, effective protection for Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones and iPads. The latest updates to Norton Mobile Security for Android address privacy, a growing area of consumer concern, with new intelligence technology called Norton Mobile Insight. Privacy risk scans powered by Norton Mobile Insight will reveal which mobile applications may put the user’s personal information at risk. The latest updates to Norton Mobile Security also extend enhanced anti-theft capabilities to iPhone and iPad with a “scream” alarm to help users quickly find their missing mobile device.

For mobile device users, maintaining control of their personal information is a major concern. In fact, 57 percent of app users have uninstalled or declined to install an app to protect their personal information. To address this issue, in addition to scanning for security risks, Norton Mobile Security now scans apps for privacy risk-related attributes. For example, Norton Mobile Security will now flag an application and notify a user if a mobile app is found to export information such as a user’s contacts, photos or call logs. Because consumers don’t have knowledge of how their data may be used, collected or shared, they are not able to maintain control of their personal information. Norton Mobile Security empowers consumers to protect their personal information and make informed decisions about which apps to keep or remove.

“The issue of privacy is a complex and evolving one for both, consumers and developers,” said Con Mallon, Senior Director, Product Management, Symantec Corp. “Until now, mobile app privacy scanning has been done only at the most superficial level, which doesn’t yield truly relevant and actionable information to consumers. With this latest release, we are using a unique combination of static and dynamic analysis to deliver an unprecedented view into app privacy and information leakage. With this information, consumers can actually decide for themselves whether to keep each app.”

Users of Norton Mobile Security benefit from Norton Mobile Insight, a proprietary intelligence tool that provides dynamic analysis for every app in more than 200 app stores to determine potential security risks, privacy risks and potentially intrusive behavior. Norton Mobile Insight has analysed more than four million apps to date and determined that more than 30 percent of them leak data such as personal contacts or call logs. Currently, Norton Mobile Insight processes 10,000 new apps every 24 hours and to date has identified 300,000 apps as malicious and 1.5 million apps as being associated with greyware — such as aggressive ad networks — or potential privacy risks.