Leader: Act now to stop next wave of virus attacks

More than a decade after the problem of computer viruses began to hit mainstream consciousness we are still this week talking about the dire need for greater end user education if we are to crack down on the high levels of malware activity.

Now today we appear to be seeing the start of the next wave of virus threat - that being posed to smart-phone handsets.

Illegal downloads of a mobile game are coming laced with a nasty piece of Trojan code that once installed on the handset will send premium rate SMS messages - to the considerable cost of the unsuspecting end user.

Don't take this as scaremongering. It's far from panic stations but if the above has taught us anything it's that these messages tend to take far longer to sink in than we ever realise and simple pre-emptive measures can be far more effective.

Never underestimate the ability of the end user to ignore all the warnings and blunder into a security scare - so let's not assume more than a little hand(set)-holding is called for.

Even now we need to be calling upon the mobile phone operators, the handset manufacturers, software providers, the media and most importantly parents (because it's the must-have-gadget demographic of pester-power teens that are most at risk here) to do everything they can to educate end users who often are in search of cheap games, ringtones or screensavers with little regard for the authenticity of the provider.

After all, leaf through the back of a magazine which contains hundreds of ads for such services and ask yourself how easy it would be for a scammer to set up a service offering ringtones which undercut other providers' - knowing their Trojans infecting the downloads will more than make their money back.

Act now, not several years down the line.