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  By Neil J. Rubenking

• April 25, 2012
• Comments

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Unless brazen thieves pull up to your house in a moving van with the aim of purloining all your electronic valuables, your desktop PC isn’t likely to get stolen. It’s too bulky, and a zillion cables connect it to other devices. Certainly you’re not going to simply lose a PC!

However, your smartphone has nearly as much computing power as that PC (more, if the PC is really old), and opportunities for smartphone loss or theft are almost limitless. We’ll show you how to protect both your iPhone or Android device and the personal data it contains.

Lock It Up
If you haven’t set up a screen-lock passcode to protect your smartphone, pull the device out right now and set one. IPhone users can choose a simple four-digit numeric PIN or an eight-character alphanumeric passcode. The four-digit PIN is easier to enter due to the big buttons on the phone keypad, but the eight-character passcode is much more secure. To minimize the annoyance of frequent passcode re-entry, you can set the phone to auto-lock after a delay of one to five minutes.

Android users have choices that vary by device. Using a numeric or alphanumeric passcode is one option. Some devices support unlocking with a swipe pattern, or even using facial recognition. As with the iPhone you’ll probably find it convenient to set a delay, so the phone doesn’t lock immediately when you turn it off.

While a four-digit numeric PIN is handy on either type of device, you should know that law enforcement can crack four-digit PINs using advanced forensic software. If the lawmen can do it, chances are good the crooks can do it too.

Don’t Break Security
Numerous studies have shown that the built-in security in Apple’s iOS works very, very well. It’s not perfect, but it’s significantly tighter than Android’s.

The one way to lose this protection? Jailbreak your iPhone. According to researcher Dino Dai Zovi, a jailbroken iPhone is roughly as secure as a standard Android phone. Jailbreak it and you throw away your security advantage.

Rooting an Android phone is the equivalent of jailbreaking an iPhone. Some apps require rooting; don’t install those apps. Do note that the law-enforcment forensic software mentioned earlier can automatically root an Android phone, and some malware attacks can also root the phone.

A few high-end Android phones automatically wipe all data when rooted. The thief will have your smartphone, but not your personal data.

Don’t Give Permission
Every time you install an Android app, you have to approve a laundry list of permissions. Don’t just click to allow them all. Read the entire list. If you find something illogical, like a flashlight app asking for access to your email contacts, cancel the installation. An Android app with no permissions whatever can still get a small amount of information about your phone, but if you don’t review the permissions list you may be giving an app the keys to the kingdom.

You can only get iPhone apps from the App Store, but Android apps are available outside the Android Market. In China, the official Android Market isn’t even available. Android malware is rampant in China because there’s no Google Bouncer to suppress obviously malicious apps. Stick to the Android Market, or put your phone at risk.

Apps for the iPhone go through a rigorous vetting by Apple. In theory, an app requiring unreasonable permissions wouldn’t get past this process, though there have been slip-ups. The main area where you have a choice involves apps that want to use your location. Check the list of apps under Location Services in the iPhone’s settings, and turn it off for any apps that don’t truly need your location. Note that if you let the camera use location settings, every photo you upload reveals exactly where you were at the time.

Crank Up Security
When your smartphone’s operating system gets an update, it almost always includes patches for security flaws. Don’t delay; always install updates as soon as they’re available.

Android users can prevent certain types of hack attacks by making a few simple changes to settings. The USB Debugging feature gives hackers (or lawmen) easy access to your Android phone via a USB connection to a PC. Disable USB debugging. If your phone includes the option to use full disk encryption, enable it.

Those using iPhones should check to see if backups are encrypted. If not, open iTunes, delete the old backups and set a password to encrypt new backups. You can also choose the SIM PIN option in Phone settings to ensure that a thief can’t simply eject your SIM and use it in another phone.

Get Help
You wouldn’t leave your PC naked, unprotected by an antivirus tool or security suite. Your smartphone, especially if it’s an Android device, can benefit from a mobile security app.

In addition to protection against mobile malware, these tools often come with a variety of antitheft features. They’ll let you check a lost or stolen phone’s location, lock the phone remotely, wipe or encrypt personal data, even snap a photo of the thief.

Smartphones put virtually all the power of a desktop computer in your pocket. Most of us would sooner go out without pants than without our cherished phone. Take the precautions listed here to keep your smartphone and its data as safe as possible.

In a move it tried — and abandoned — once before, Google began selling a smartphone directly to consumers through a new online store on Tuesday.

Consumers can now buy the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which is manufactured by Samsung but runs on Google’s Android operating system, in the Google Play store, or what it used to call its Android Market. The phone, which costs $399, will ship “unlocked,” which means it works with multiple wireless carriers. Sprint Nextel and Verizon will subsidize half the cost of the phone for consumers who commit to a two-year contract.

Google’s previous direct-to-consumers push was in January 2010, when it sold its Nexus One smartphone through its online store. It had helped design the phone with HTC, the manufacturer. It abandoned the effort less than six months later because of poor sales. The problem was that T-Mobile was the only carrier that subsidized its $529 price tag, and that carriers refused to sell the phone through their own retail outlets.

“While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not,” Google wrote in a blog post in May 2010 “It’s remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from.”

Google has since worked closely with carriers to make phones with its Android system available in their retail outlets. That has helped make Android the dominant smartphone operating platform with 300 million Android devices activated globally. That, experts say, helped Google lure app developers. Google had 16,000 apps in its Android market when it introduced the Nexus One in January 2010. It now boasts 500,000.

“The Nexus One was a flop, but at least it got a lot of phones into developers’ hands,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners.

Google’s new online store could soon feature two new devices: its much-anticipated tablet and a home entertainment device. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, told an Italian newspaper last December that Google planned to release a tablet by June of this year. The Wall Street Journal, in a subsequent report, said Google would sell the device through its online store.

The company is also working on a prototype for a home entertainment device, according to people inside the company who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak. While the initial purpose of the device will be for streaming music, the eventual use could be much wider, these people said.

Analysts have largely questioned whether Google’s online sales strategy will work. “It’s won’t be a game changer,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst. To work, Ms. Rotman Epps noted, Google will have to reposition itself from a free search engine into an e-commerce company. Google has always given away its core services for free and generated its revenue from advertising. It will take an undisclosed cut of sales from its online store.

“Google has spent the last decade training consumers to think ‘free’,” Ms. Rotman Epps added. “Now they want to change that relationship and re-brand as a company that sells stuff to consumers. That is a hard thing to do.”

HAMBURG, GERMANY —
The free app CamSam is now available in iTunes App Store and in the Android market. Users get timely information over the GPS about all registered speedcams on their section of the road. Besides radar trackers, they are also informed about red lights and section controls. The warnings are not only displayed on the screen, they are also accompanied by voice messages in any of the 6 available languages.

To keep this network of information up-to-date, it also works in the other direction. If a user wants to report a speedcam, they can use the reporting function on the smartphone to warn other fellow drivers. The current position of the speedcam is determined immediately and transmitted to the system, checked by the CamSam editor team and sent back to the community. To improve the quality of speedcam data for the users, the app also has a useful, integrated feature called “Confirm speedcam.” That means, if the user passes by a registered speedcam location, the system asks them whether the speedcam is currently there. Anyone wishing to benefit from the other useful functions, such as the Landscape mode, can download the paid version “CamSam Plus.”

Users will derive benefit from the world’s largest database “SCDB.info” containing entries for more than 47,000 stationary speed and red light cams all over the world and the mobile real-time speedcam notifications of the steadily growing community of CamSam.

“CamSam far exceeds our expectations. So far, almost 3 million active users have installed the mobile speedcam warners on their smartphones. Our community is growing every day and improves with every new user,” says CamSam founder Matthias Eifrig.

www.camsam.com

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© Marketwire 2012

That was quick.

Sponsorship positions for the TechCrunch Mini Meet-Up in NYC are officially filled, and boy is this thing going to be awesome! If you aren’t already aware (and shame on you, if you aren’t), we’re having a little get-together for the tech/startup industry here in the Big Apple on May 8.

It’ll be held at Bar13 on University Pl. and 13th St. from 6pm-10pm and we expect 500 people there at the very least. Even more awesome, you guys aren’t the only ones who are stoked to get in on the action — we’ll have even more TC staff here than expected. Along with John Biggs and myself, Chris Velazco, Matt Burns, Eric Eldon, Peter Ha, Josh Zelman and possibly Alexia Tsotsis will be in attendance. In fact, we may even get Arianna Huffington herself to come check out the festivities.

Very exciting.

If ever there was a great way to network your arse off while drinking beer and potentially singing a little Karaoke, this would be it. So if you haven’t already RSVP’d, head on over to our PlanCast page and get yourself on the list. We need a headcount. You know, for the beer.

We’d also like to thank our wonderful sponsors for making this entire thing possible:

Yext helps provide amazing local search results with PowerListings, a local information hub that syncs listings across a network of premium sites and mobile apps. With Yext PowerListings, small and large businesses can quickly and easily update their business information, photos and specials from one central location. Today, Yext PowerListings syncs information for over 45,000 locations.

Traducto is a powerful and easy to use translation and localization app.
With Traducto users can leverage human translation to translate documents, emails, newsletters, social postings, marketing materials and more. TraductoPro allows developers to convert iOS or Mac apps, into a multilingual application, making the app available to a wider global audience. By making it simple to localize your application and offering 16 different language translations, TraductoPro is designed to reduce the pain typically associated with localization. Our integrated approach combines automating app localization through direct Xcode integration, with a high quality human translation service all within a single application. TraductoPro offers support for content translations, app store metadata and Xcode projects localization.

WhatRunsWhere is a competitive intelligence service for online media buying. It allows you to look up what advertisers are doing online; where they are running ads, who they are buying their inventory through and what exact ads they are using. WhatRunsWhere allows you to see what is happening on any website; who is advertising there, who’s selling the inventory for them and what ads are they using. With data from multiple countries and actionable insights regarding the data, WhatRunsWhere quickly allows anyone to dissect advertising campaigns resulting in reduced risk and a higher ROI media buying process.

Parlor® is the creator of unique branded communication applications: GroupCall™, TopicTalk™ and MobiCast™. Our goal is to make useful tools to communicate globally, both efficiently and for free. We will be unleashing these three awesome applications on iOS and Android at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012. Follow us at http://Parlor.fm for news and updates.

Speak to any business in the world with MyGenie™, a location-based 2-way communication platform that allows iPhone and Android users to speak to businesses in real-time! It’s free, it’s quick, and it’s simple to use. No need to find a manager, an email address, or a telephone # to contact. With MyGenie™ consumers send questions, comments, complaints, feedback, and more (can also upload photos) directly to any business they choose via their smart phones. Businesses can immediately respond (and include special offers) via a business portal. MyGenie™, not just ratings, not just feedback, it’s anything and everything you want it to be! Free on Apple App Store and Android Market.

Return on Change (RoC) connects innovative startups and investors who are looking to change tomorrow’s world today. Entrepreneurs with great ideas need capital funding to jumpstart their businesses, and investors are looking to help fund the next big idea. RoC provides the online medium through which startup companies and entrepreneurs will be able to pool capital through crowdsourcing. For more information about Return on Change, please visit www.returnonchange.com or contact RoC at RoC@returnonchange.com.

PeoplePerHour is Europe’s leading marketplace connecting startups and entrepreneurs to freelance talent worldwide and we’ve just landed in NYC! Project by project we’re awakening an enormous latent workforce, from the stay at home mom and the retiree to the moonlighter and the hobbyist, removing the constraints of the traditional 9-5 office. Be it for a quick logo design, building a website, copywriting or a small translation… we’re helping businesses keep their core lean and to get the job done fast. Our vision is for this to be the defining factor in the future of work.

TouchTunes Interactive Networks is the largest interactive out-of-home entertainment network in North America. TouchTunes provides entertainment and marketing solutions to 52,000 bars and restaurants. Founded in 1998, the network has become the largest of its kind with 54M monthly users who played more than 900 million songs in 2011. The TouchTunes mobile app allows consumers in bars, restaurants, hotels, retail and arenas to play any song from our catalog without having to leave their seat and is socially integrated. TouchTunes network is the largest digital out-of-home advertising network in the US (Nielsen) and includes TouchTunesTV, a unique screen-within-a-screen interactive television experience that provides custom advertising capabilities, venue promotions and social networking opportunities. TouchTunes is a privately held U.S. corporation with offices in New York City, Arlington Heights, Illinois and Montreal, Canada. For further information, please visit us at touchtunes.com.

About two years after pulling the plug on its online smartphone store, Google today announced that the Galaxy Nexus is now available for sale via Google Play.

The Samsung smartphone is on sale via a new Devices section within Google Play, formerly known as the Android Market.

“We want to give you a place to purchase Nexus devices that work really well with your digital entertainment,” Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of mobile and digital content, wrote in a blog post.

The unlocked Galaxy Nexus is on sale for $399.99 and will work on the GSM network of your choice, including ATT and T-Mobile. The Google Wallet app is pre-installed for mobile purchases. At this point, there is a limit of five per customer.

Google unveiled the first Nexus device – the Nexus One – known as the Google Phone at the time, back in January 2010. Users could purchase the device online at www.google.com/phone for $529.99 unlocked or $179.99 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile. At the time, Google Android product manager Erick Tse said the effort was intended to remove the carriers from the phone sales process. Sales were sluggish, however, and by May, Google announced plans to shift Nexus One sales to retail stores and shut down its Web store.

As PCMag mobile analyst Sascha Segan noted recently, “attacking the home turf of partners you need to launch your product doesn’t work.”

In his blog post, Rubin said Google has “come a long way since the first Android devices started hitting shelves three and a half years ago and since the launch of the first Nexus device.” This time around, the company “implemented new customer support services to improve the purchasing experience on Google Play,” he said.

Rubin pledged to bring the Devices section to other countries soon.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first U.S. smartphone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It landed on Verizon in December and on Sprint last week. The device features a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED display and runs a 1.2-GHz dual-core processor.

For more, see PCMag’s full review of the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon Wireless and the slideshow below, as well as our review of Ice Cream Sandwich.

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.

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For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

A paradigm shift may be coming to the digital lifestyle. Instead of the PC being the center of the personal computing universe, consumers will be opting for tablets as their primary computing device and relying on cloud storage to access their content across their devices, according to a new report.

“This burgeoning market is set to disrupt the personal computing device and OS markets,” says the  report from Forrester Research on the future of computing.

Instead of serving as a supplement to a desktop or laptop computer, the report said, these burgeoning cloud services will play such an integral role in the connected future that consumers will first choose a service, then the compatible device as the focus shifts from device to personal content storage services. And tablets such as iPad will become the conduit between consumers’ digital devices such as smartphones and PC and the cloud-stored content.

“Over the next four years, tablets will gain new sensors, processing power, and better wireless capabilities for connecting with nearby devices,” wrote Frank Gillette, principal analyst on Forrester’s business technology futures team. “This will enable full voice control and dictation, increased gesture control, more situational context, better accessory integration, and software that anticipates a user’s needs.”

The computing platform will also make its way more solidly into the office, the report said. Even though the same functionality is heading to the PC, the form factor and mobility of tablets give them a clear edge over PCs, the report says.

In addition to tablets, Forrester predicts that “frames,” a new peripheral with a larger display, sensors and processing power, will emerge “for larger-scale applications, small group interactions, and presentations.”

Apple is expected to hold its prominence in the market, even as its market share erodes to tighter competition. Google’s Android, however, is expected to suffer due to a fragmented ecosystem, since Android-based tablets aren’t all granted equal access to its apps, and be surpassed by rebranded Androids such asAmazon’s Kindle.

And the advent of Windows 8 tablets is expected to pull some of the Android market, according to the report.  

“We believe that many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) will shift focus from Android devices to Windows 8 tablets but that Samsung and a variety of low-priced white label tablets will stay the course and find a role in serving primarily growth markets with budget devices,” Gillette wrote.

Microsoft is building a software architecture with touch computing fully integrated. But, many have noted, the user experience is informed and enhanced by a vibrant app ecosystem, which is slowly being populated behind others with a multi-year head start. The Forrester report said it will likely take most of next year to develop it. 

“Once rolling, however, we expect Microsoft will be a significant player,” Gillette wrote. 

Ultimately, over the next decade, PCs will be redefined, figuratively and literally, the report said. It will come to mean more about the experience than the machine.

“PC no longer will mean personal computers — instead it will be the full spectrum of personal computing, from personal cloud services to the broad range of personal technology used for work, including tablets, smartphones, and frames,” Gillette wrote.

RELATED

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Tablets and clouds to displace the PC, report says

Illustration: I Love DustWhether you consume it or create it, entertainment is likely a huge part of the reason you love tech. You probably already have a subscription to big names such as Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, or Netflix, and those are all good services, but they’re not free.

Crackle, on the other hand, is totally free, and you can stream its offerings from just about every desktop computer, phone, tablet, Internet video streaming box, or modern game console. Crackle doesn’t have a huge selection of films and TV shows, but it does have some heavy-hitting movies and series such as Talladega Nights, The Professional, and Seinfeld. Not sure what you want to watch? Sign up for MovieLens, an ad-free recommendation service set up by the University of Minnesota that uses your own ratings of flicks to predict new movies that you’ll enjoy. Although Netflix also predicts movies you’ll like based on ratings, it can do so only with movies the company has the rights to, whereas MovieLens has no obligations to any film studios.

For creative types, Cinemagram is an iOS-only app that turns your photos into animated .gif files and lets you share them with your social network, very much like Instagram. Longer movie-editing projects require heftier software, and the Lightworks Public Beta could be it. This full-on desktop movie-editing suite is open source, and lets you cleanly import and edit video. You have to register first to download the software, but once you do, startup is straightforward.

Then there’s Stitcher Radio, an iOS and Android app that allows you to listen to thousands of podcasts and live radio channels from your phone. You can use Stitcher to create your own customized playlists, or just let Stitcher recommend podcasts for you.

If you want a free music player, try Google Music, a hybrid of Dropbox, iTunes, and Spotify. You can upload as many as 20,000 songs to a free cloud-storage locker hooked up to your Google account. Google can recommend songs just as Spotify does; and if you buy tracks in the Android Market, your friends on Google+ can listen to those songs for free.

If you miss Picnik, the free Web-based photo-editing site that Google shuttered earlier this year, try Picozu Editor. In this awesome Web-based photo editor, you can upload your photos, apply any number of filters, and use all sorts of funky brushes and drawing tools to make your own creations. And for showing off photos, there’s Pinterest, a combination photo-sharing site and social media outlet that lets you “pin” images to a board and allows other users to browse and comment on your pins.

For a little distraction during the day, try developer Neave’s Planetarium, which is available as a website and as an app for the Google Chrome browser. Set your location, and you can see the constellations above you at any time of the day or night, and find the names of some of the major stars. It’s like Google Earth, but for the vastness of the sky. If you’re looking for something to while away the time on your Android phone, Cut and Slice is an easy and fast-paced puzzle game in which you have to divide shapes into equal portions with a trace of your finger across your phone’s screen. It’s easy to dismiss this game at first, but as the levels get higher, it becomes harder to put your phone down.

Seeking a more involved game, perhaps a multiplayer offering? League of Legends and The Lord of the Rings Online are two MMOs that you can play on your PC with just a simple download. The former lets you choose a single character and form teams to battle for territory on a map. And in the latter, Tolkien fans can explore Middle Earth and battle against the forces of Sauron. The game is free up to level 50; game extensions will cost you extra.

(Credit:
Apple)

App developers looking to make some cash might want to ditch paid titles for free offerings that include in-app purchases, according to a new study.

After downloading an upgradable freemium game in a mobile app store, 40 percent of consumers decided to make an in-game purchase, according to research firm NPD. Most, however, were men. The analysts found that while women are more likely to have played freemium games, they’re “among the least likely to pay for an upgrade.”

Freemium games have become increasingly popular in the mobile marketplace. The titles are free to download and play, but in order to take advantage of advanced features or functionality, developers charge gamers for access.

Several studies over the last several months have highlighted the value of in-app purchases. Research firm IHS said back in January that in-app purchases accounted for $970 million in sales last year, representing 39 percent of all spending. By 2015, that figure could grow to $5.6 billion, or 64 percent of the market.

“In 2012, it will become increasingly difficult for app stores and developers to justify charging an upfront fee for their products when faced with competition from a plethora of free content,” said Jack Kent, an analyst at IHS. “Instead, the apps industry must fully embrace the freemium model and monetize content through in-app purchases.”

Earlier this month, Amazon announced in-app purchasing support for its Appstore, seeming to follow Kent’s advice. Apple’s App Store and the Google
Android Market both already offer in-app purchasing.

NPD found that in-app purchasing tends to drop off after a person plays a game for more than a month, making it imperative for developers to target users with purchases as soon as possible after downloading, NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in a statement today.

Still, freemium games are wildly popular, with 85 percent of those who are aware of the app category downloading such titles. All told, 38 percent of the U.S. population aged 2 years or older is currently playing some type of freemium game, NPD says.

NPD conducted its freemium game study between February 27 and March 7, and surveyed over 6,400 individuals aged 2 years and up.

A paradigm shift may be coming to the digital lifestyle. Instead of the PC being the center of the personal computing universe, consumers will be opting for tablets as their primary computing device and relying on cloud storage to access their content across their devices, according to a new report.

“This burgeoning market is set to disrupt the personal computing device and OS markets,” says the  report from Forrester Research on the future of computing.

Instead of serving as a supplement to a desktop or laptop computer, the report said, these burgeoning cloud services will play such an integral role in the connected future that consumers will first choose a service, then the compatible device as the focus shifts from device to personal content storage services. And tablets such as iPad will become the conduit between consumers’ digital devices such as smartphones and PC and the cloud-stored content.

“Over the next four years, tablets will gain new sensors, processing power, and better wireless capabilities for connecting with nearby devices,” wrote Frank Gillette, principal analyst on Forrester’s business technology futures team. “This will enable full voice control and dictation, increased gesture control, more situational context, better accessory integration, and software that anticipates a user’s needs.”

The computing platform will also make its way more solidly into the office, the report said. Even though the same functionality is heading to the PC, the form factor and mobility of tablets give them a clear edge over PCs, the report says.

In addition to tablets, Forrester predicts that “frames,” a new peripheral with a larger display, sensors and processing power, will emerge “for larger-scale applications, small group interactions, and presentations.”

Apple is expected to hold its prominence in the market, even as its market share erodes to tighter competition. Google’s Android, however, is expected to suffer due to a fragmented ecosystem, since Android-based tablets aren’t all granted equal access to its apps, and be surpassed by rebranded Androids such asAmazon’s Kindle.

And the advent of Windows 8 tablets is expected to pull some of the Android market, according to the report.  

“We believe that many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) will shift focus from Android devices to Windows 8 tablets but that Samsung and a variety of low-priced white label tablets will stay the course and find a role in serving primarily growth markets with budget devices,” Gillette wrote.

Microsoft is building a software architecture with touch computing fully integrated. But, many have noted, the user experience is informed and enhanced by a vibrant app ecosystem, which is slowly being populated behind others with a multi-year head start. The Forrester report said it will likely take most of next year to develop it. 

“Once rolling, however, we expect Microsoft will be a significant player,” Gillette wrote. 

Ultimately, over the next decade, PCs will be redefined, figuratively and literally, the report said. It will come to mean more about the experience than the machine.

“PC no longer will mean personal computers — instead it will be the full spectrum of personal computing, from personal cloud services to the broad range of personal technology used for work, including tablets, smartphones, and frames,” Gillette wrote.

RELATED

Window of opportunity for Microsoft tablets

Exclusive hands-on look at MasterImage 3-D tablet

Survey of tablet users shows iPad on top, gives Microsoft hope 

Follow Michelle Maltais on Google+, Facebook or Twitter

Tablets and clouds to displace the PC, report says

The release of an Android app and the $1 billion Facebook acquisition has put Instagram in the headlines of late, and not surprisingly, cyber scammers have already moved in to capitalize on this popularity.

Security firm Sophos identified several fake Instagram apps across the Web, which are intended to “earn money from unsuspecting users,” analyst Graham Cluley wrote in a blog post.

Cluley pointed to a Russian website that claimed to offer the Android version of the Instagram app. But “If you download your app from this site, rather than an official Android marketplace such as Google Play, then you are running the risk of infecting your smartphone,” Cluley wrote.

In testing the app, Cluley said Sophos found that the fake app was sending background SMS messages in order to earn revenue for its creators. Overall, it did a poor job of emulating the Instagram experience.

The malware in question on the app is known as Andr/Boxer-F.

The discovery comes shortly after Sophos also identified fake Angry Birds Space apps. “It’s quite likely that whoever is behind this latest malware campaign is also using the names and images of other popular smartphone apps as bait,” Cluley wrote.

Oddly, Sophos points out, the fake Russian Instagram app includes a photo of an unidentified man in the .APK file, who looks vaguely like Will Ferrell.

“Maybe the reason why his picture is included multiple times is to change the fingerprint of the .APK in the hope that rudimentary anti-virus scanners might be fooled into not recognizing the malicious package,” Cluley speculated.

On Google Play, formerly known as Android Market, there are a few apps that take advantage of the Instagram name – Instaroid, InstaPics, Instagram Heaven, and InstaG, among others – but none that appear to spoof it outright in the hopes of pulling in unsuspecting users.

Android malware was big news in 2011. Unlike Apple, Google does not have a strict approval process in place for its Android Market, and while that might make for a more open environment, it also makes the store vulnerable to some dangerous apps.

To address this issue, Google in February added a new layer of security to Google Play, dubbed Bouncer, that will scan apps for evidence of malware.

For more, see PCMag’s full reviews of Instagram for iPhone and Instagram for Android, as well as the slideshow below.

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.

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For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.