Re: Who do you believe? - 'Wired' say the 'Play Store' is a Malware magnet:
It's not a question of who to believe. Of course the Play Store is a malware magnet, for the same reason that Windows has historically been a malware magnet - it's where the vast majority of the targets are, so it's where the criminal focus their efforts. As long as that central target repository exists, you can avoid most of the bad actors by simply not using it. But that doesn't mean things would necessarily be better if it weren't there, since you'd then just be in a wild west where people with no clue what they're doing downloaded any random crap from anywhere. Those of us who have had to help out family members who have managed to fill up their entire browser with toolbars know just how well that can work out.
The problem is that you ultimately have to compromise in some way. Locking down a device so that a single central authority can control what can and can't be installed can potentially provide good security, but at the cost of user freedom as well as making an obvious target for attack. Allowing anyone to do whatever they like results in anyone being allowed to do whatever they like. Whether Android's attempt to do a bit of both is better is a subject for debate, but it doesn't seem inherently worse than either extreme.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
