Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is your assumption that the perceived threat is a 'nation-state', not mine. Personally I'm not to worried about them and I'm more concerned with advertisers and data brokers. Let's take that brief dig into those 'malware' reports, shall we? Here's one from the Wall Street Journal[0] from last year. Some choice quotes: "Security-software maker Avast called out a trio of malicious Android apps that were, until recen…
> It is your assumption that the perceived threat is a 'nation-state'... ... That was the opening sentence of my paragraph that demonstrated that there is no such thing as "guaranteed security". If you think that there is such a thing, then you're going to be confused about many things when you think about security matters. To the rest of your comment: You need to keep things in perspective. [0] * On Windows, Mac, an…
What part of your response above advances your counter-argument please? The closest you came was saying that "Actual "take over your computer" malware doesn't exist in either the Play Store or the App Store." but this is directly contradicted by this story from just yesterday: http://www.slashgear.com/viking-horde-malware-uses-google-pl... (plenty of other sites covering this too)
I'm also unclear about missing limbs being somehow analogous to 'abandoned' phones. Let's set that aside and have a look at this chart on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history Can you look at that and still say that updates are not a wide-spread problem? It links to sources and indicates to me that most Android phones are not using a current version with up-to-date security patches. Do you disagree?
I've stated from the beginning that I disagree that distribution via Google Play is any guarantee of security and provided links to specific examples of malware in the Google Play store as evidence that Google Play has repeatedly been used to distribute malware to many millions of devices. Can you rebut this?
As an aside, I'm reading your reply and I'm thinking to myself "If someone needed a comprehensive 'how-to' for a straw man argument then this one is pretty good". Also please consider that popups were a real problem as late as the early 2000's. That means you must be thinking I am in my early teens, if I am to take your "Are you old enough to remember popup web advertising?" comment at face value. I have to say it isn't helping to persuade me, and is having the opposite effect.