You should not trust these 2 antiviruses for Android

The number of Android mobile threats is growing daily. Google’s mobile operating system allows you to develop a multitude of applications with some freedom, which is also usually a gateway for cybercriminals, knowing that the use we make of our smartphone already makes it a more profitable device to attack than our own PC.

To try to stop these criminals, one of the best options is to install a mobile antivirus, but an analysis of the performance, usability and protection of more than a dozen of these apps carried out by AV Test has given us surprising results.

You should not trust these 2 antiviruses for Android

Beware of these two antiviruses for Android

If we look carefully at the results of this Android antivirus test, we’ll see that two of them are not as secure as we might think and they come in the last two positions of the 16 mobile security programs analyzed.

It is especially striking that the worst of all is Google’s own antivirus, Google Play Protect . In the tests carried out by AV Test, the pre-installed antivirus on Android fails above all in protection.

Resultados frente a malware

Results against malware

Each security application evaluated in the test had to demonstrate its protection against malware applications. To do so, the lab implemented two testing phases: the real-time test with more than 3,000 recent infected apps. Additionally, the lab used 2,800 file malware applications as a reference set, as they were already in circulation for up to four weeks.

Android’s default protection service performed poorly with 83.5% and 86.4% percent detection respectively, showing that databases take longer to update for best results. Among consumer security apps, 7 apps demonstrated perfect detection of all malware apps: Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, G DATA, Norton, securiON, and Trend Micro.

As for the other that clearly failed this review, Ikarus , it did not achieve such disastrous results in malware, 97.4% and 99.8% respectively, but lost points in usability by showing false alarms on occasion.

The best mobile antivirus

Among security apps for home users, the sample of apps tested in this test included AhnLab, Avast, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, F-Secure, G DATA, Google, Ikarus, Kaspersky, McAfee, Norton, Protected.net, securiON , Sophos and Trend Micro. 12 of these applications concluded the test with the maximum score of 18. Another two obtained excellent 17.5 and 17 points.

In this way, the 12 antivirus that obtained the outstanding and the two that obtained a notable leave the ranking as follows:

Test antivirus Android

Android antivirus test

  • AhnLab: 18/18 points
  • Avast: 18/18 points
  • AVG: 18/18 points
  • Bitdefender: 18/18 points
  • G DATA: 18/18 points
  • Kaspersky: 18/18 points
  • Norton: 18/18 points
  • Protected.net: 18/18 points
  • security: 18/18 points
  • Sophos: 18/18 points
  • Trend Micro: 18/18 points
  • McAfee: 17.5/18 points
  • F-Secure: 17/18 points

Ikarus would be in penultimate position, as we have said before, since he only gets 15.5 points out of a possible 18, only getting a perfect grade in the performance section. The red lantern is for Google Play Protect , which despite achieving perfect scores of 6 points in performance and usability, fails with 2/6 points in protection for the reasons mentioned above.