Source@Sci-Fi Galaxy

The rapid development of the mobile Internet is obvious to all, and the smart phone, which carries various applications, software and games of the mobile Internet, has developed rapidly in recent years and has become an indispensable thing in people's lives. But there are pros and cons to everything, and all kinds of malware on smartphones have seriously affected our daily lives.

These malware may steal traffic and phone bills; or collect user information; or push advertisements; Or let the user's phone system crash...... And for the reason that most people don't understand mobile phones, many of these malware are built in before users buy them. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued a document prohibiting the built-in malware of mobile phones, so has the behavior of built-in malware on mobile phones been restricted?

Mobile malware is on the rampage

In June last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a draft of the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of Mobile Intelligent Terminals Access to the Network", and decided to start remediating the built-in malware of mobile phones in the customized production process of mobile phone terminals. Why is that? The reason is that the vast majority of smartphone users are not very knowledgeable about mobile phones, and they can easily uninstall or delete all kinds of malware built into mobile phones. Moreover, many built-in malware cannot be uninstalled without flashing the system, which has a great impact on the user's life.

At present, the malware built into mobile phones is roughly divided into the following types: first, it is mainly thought to increase software traffic and steal traffic, so that users will unknowingly consume a lot of mobile phone traffic and generate high phone bills; the second is to directly steal the phone bill, through the virus embedded in the guò software, directly steal the user's phone bill; The third is to push advertisements and earn clicks, often popping up ads on the main interface of the mobile phone, and users are annoyed; Fourth, the privacy of mobile phone users is the mainstay, and the collection of private information such as users' address books, text messages, addresses, and hobbies is likely to be used as illegal channels; Fifth, it is a pure software virus, which is designed to damage the user's mobile phone system and make the user's mobile phone unable to work normally.

Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requires that when applying for a mobile intelligent terminal network access license, it shall explain the operating system, preset application software and its provider in the product introduction materials, and requires that "if the operating system of the mobile intelligent terminal after obtaining the network access license has undergone major functional changes or new preset application software is added, the manufacturer shall file with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology." ”

But for now, it's a dead letter. Taking Xiaomi mobile phones as an example, there are many built-in software from Xiaomi's own internal software and partner software, but most of them do not explain to users whether the software will collect user information and whether it will affect users...... Moreover, a lot of Xiaomi mobile phone content in the software will send non-nutritious push messages to users, so that users are unable to guard against it.

Licensed, parallel imports, Internet mobile phones, none of them can run away

In view of the high price of licensed mobile phones, many users go to buy parallel mobile phones. It is true that parallel mobile phones are much cheaper than licensed mobile phones. But there is no free lunch in the world, parallel mobile phones have no warranty, and there are a lot of built-in malware. In Shenzhen's parallel goods market, malware built into mobile phones has long been an unwritten rule. And a lot of malware is embedded in the system and can't be removed at all. For many users, they don't know how to flash their phones at all, so they are naturally poisoned by these built-in malware. For example, some parallel HTC mobile phones have a built-in reading software called MobileReader, in fact, it is a fee-absorbing software, and users will be charged a high value-added fee if they don't pay attention to it.

Naturally, parallel mobile phones are not the focus of our consideration, because the regulations of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology are mainly aimed at licensed mobile phones, including Internet mobile phones. Many users think that licensed phones are guaranteed and will not have built-in malware, but this view is wrong. Recently, some consumers bought a Samsung i9200 mobile phone in a regular chain store called Leyu, but after turning it on, they found that the mobile phone had been installed with 360 mobile phone security guard, Youni SMS and many other software. Although these are not software that steals phone bills or traffic, they cannot be deleted, which causes great trouble to users. After research, these software are not officially installed by Samsung, but are flashed into the mobile phone through some special "one-click flashing" software.

This is because the competition in domestic apps is fierce, and many app developers spend money on pre-installing their own software from sellers in order to compete for users. These built-in software can also be called malware, as their goal is to reside on the user's phone and collect user information. And because it is built-in software, it will start automatically when it is turned on, whether it is pushing ads or standing in the background, it will consume a lot of traffic of users or affect the standby performance of the battery, and it will also cause the problem of unstable dìng and frequent restart of the phone. Even theoretically, this phone can only be guaranteed in stores and cannot enjoy Samsung's official national warranty.

Compared with traditional smartphone manufacturers, the Internet mobile phone has more built-in malware. The survival of Internet mobile phones lies in attracting users at a low price. Therefore, in order to reduce costs, in addition to shrinking in hardware, we also cooperate with many app developers or app stores to build in a lot of software. A large number of second- and third-tier application developers or start-ups have thought of cooperating with Internet mobile phone manufacturers due to the lack of promotion channels and the inability to win a higher installed capacity in a short period of time. In this way, their app will become a system application, self-starting and staying in the background to connect to the Internet from time to time, increasing the user activity of their software, so as to earn high advertising fees. Many Internet mobile phones represented by Xiaomi mobile phones almost all have such a problem, which is annoying.

Summary: When will the malware inside the phone stop?

Why do so many people not like to choose a customized machine from China Mobile, China Unicom or Telecom when buying a mobile phone? Just because they have a lot of built-in software that can't be removed, which makes users annoyed. But now the trend of built-in malware in smartphones is becoming more and more prevalent, harming the interests of many users. At the same time, these software sticks to the mobile phone like a dogskin plaster, and users hate it, which will inevitably lead to a bad reputation of the software and eventually be spurned by users.

The fact that the "latent" malware built into mobile phones is still so strong after the announcement of the stripes of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is enough to confirm the huge profits of this industry, so that many manufacturers and developers do not hesitate to risk their lives. Shouldn't more stringent laws and regulations be enacted to curb it? Let's wait and see!