re: My question is
@Paul Murphy:
While it may be a bit of a reach to claim this as isolated at this stage (other than no one else has reported a problem) I think VF have some justification in claiming this is not a widespread problem.
These particular malware instances are not difficult to detect with any up to date antivirus product (not just the researchers own product featured so prominently in the article) so the likelihood is that if there were a widespread problem it would have surfaced pretty quickly because a fairly large number of VF Magic users must have connected their new phones to Windows PC's running antiviris software, to copy their music or whatever to the phone .
My VF Magic arrived in a VF box without the SD card installed, which was a brand new SanDisk 8GB card still in its original wrapper. I doubt it had ever been in a phone.
I would have liked the journalist to put some effort into determining the actual provenance of the SD Card, wheter supplied by Vodafone, a retailer, the actiuual owner of the phone,or the researcher in question.