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From what I've seen, the majority of Android malware either comes from Google's Play Store, or gets included on the phones by certain OEMs. F-droid in particula

From what I've seen, the majority of Android malware either comes from Google's Play Store, or gets included on the phones by certain OEMs. F-droid in particular, due to its open source requirement, hasn't ended up hosting any malware so far.

abc-xyz 6y ago
F-Droid is even more locked down than the App Store, and even if they turned it into the default app store then Android would still be riddled with malware. As to how the Android users keep acquiring malware, I have no idea whether it’s from the Play Store, or if they download free apk files of paid apps, or if they download it through ads or from emails or whatever. I just know I have to help fix them regularly, and if iOS is forced to open up then iPhones will suffer from the same malware issues that you see with OSX/Windows/Android.
nodamage 6y ago
This is incorrect. Google's own statistics (https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_Security_2018_Report_Final.pdf https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_S...) indicate that devices that use side-loading have an 8x relative higher incidence of malware compared to devices that only install apps from the Google Play Store. (Note: I believe Google's absolute numbers are significantly underestimated due to the poor performance of Google Play Protect compared to other malware detection tools, but so far they are the only source I have found that publishes relative numbers between the Play Store vs side-loading.) As some high profile examples: - HummingBad infected 85 million devices primarily via direct-download on malicious adult websites. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-malware-has-infected-85-million-devices-and-makes-its-creators-300000-a-month/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-malware-has-infec...) - Agent Smith infected 25 million devices primarily via a third-party app store. (https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-android-malware-25-million-infections https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr...)

abc-xyz 6y ago

F-Droid is even more locked down than the App Store, and even if they turned it into the default app store then Android would still be riddled with malware. As to how the Android users keep acquiring malware, I have no idea whether it’s from the Play Store, or if they download free apk files of paid apps, or if they download it through ads or from emails or whatever. I just know I have to help fix them regularly, and if iOS is forced to open up then iPhones will suffer from the same malware issues that you see with OSX/Windows/Android.

nodamage 6y ago

This is incorrect. Google's own statistics (https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_Security_2018_Report_Final.pdf https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_S...) indicate that devices that use side-loading have an 8x relative higher incidence of malware compared to devices that only install apps from the Google Play Store. (Note: I believe Google's absolute numbers are significantly underestimated due to the poor performance of Google Play Protect compared to other malware detection tools, but so far they are the only source I have found that publishes relative numbers between the Play Store vs side-loading.) As some high profile examples: - HummingBad infected 85 million devices primarily via direct-download on malicious adult websites. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-malware-has-infected-85-million-devices-and-makes-its-creators-300000-a-month/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-malware-has-infec...) - Agent Smith infected 25 million devices primarily via a third-party app store. (https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-android-malware-25-million-infections https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20688885/agent-smith-andr...)