Venerable Android Dev Denounces Android Antivirus Apps

Diogo Ferreira, author of Penetrate and an authority on the Android Market, a man who’s seen it all, has issued an incendiary statement exposing the truth behind antivirus crapware, stirring up a whirlwind of controversy across the Facebook and the Twitter.

A snippet from his press release:

Soon enough, several antivirus applications for Android started flagging Penetrate. Why? I will never know, I tried to reason with them and went as far as decompiling their code to know what was going on.

My conclusions were the following: People who buy antivirus apps for Android are being robbed. The only thing this app did was store a list of hand-written application package names, performing no active detection whatsoever. Android Antivirus apps are a joke, do not buy them, do not use them. They give you a false sense of security.

The Man has declined to comment.