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As reported by BBC News, F-Secure, Finnish security firm, has created an antivirus program for your cellular phone, a reaction to the growing number of viruses that infect handsets. Many security experts believe that phone bugs will eventually become as big a nuisance as Windows viruses.

Mobile Phone AntiVirusAlthough not as robust as your mainstream virus scanners for the PC, the software promises to protect bluetooth enabled handsets (the most vulnerable type) from most of the current types of virus software, such as Cabir or Commwarrior. Those mobile viruses can spread via the Bluetooth short range radio system found on many smart phones. Commwarrior can also spread via multimedia messaging systems. Most of the mobile phone viruses target handsets that use the Symbian operating system. A simple method to avoid infection is by turning off Bluetooth on smart phones.

Richard Hales, UK manager for F-Secure, said that although many mobile operators had software in their networks to stop viruses propagating, more protection was needed to stop the bugs jumping from phone to phone. Furthermore, he said that currently only about 10% of handsets were so-called smartphones that can fall victim to these viruses. However, the numbers of smartphones was going to inevitably rise making more and more people vulnerable to infection.

F-Secure said that it?s boxed anti-virus software for mobiles will be in the shops and available online from 5 September.

Specification code: protect-your-phone-cell-from-virus