Now, let’s jump to the other side of the list to look at the best-performing software. These are Line Antivirus (72.4%), Ikarus curity (79.3%), and AhnLab V3 Mobile Security (79.3%). Next up are three less-known security companies, whose detection rates hover around 70%. It caught only 17 out of 29 spyware apps, a detection rate of 58.6%. The second-worst result was shown by NortonLifeLock Norton 360 security software. The best performers like Bitdefender, Trend Micro, ESET, and Kaspersky charge a small licensing fee, usually around $10 per year for 1 device. Yet, some of the applications evaluated are free of charge as well.

One might argue that it is still a decent result, given that the application is free of charge, and comes built-in to all Android devices.

Shockingly, by far, the worst results were from the native Google Play Protect application, as it only detected 9 threats out of 29, which constitutes a success rate of 31%. The analysis was carried out in July 2021. Each security application had to detect 29 unique stalkerware threats. This means that the fraudster can gather all the sensitive information that you type on your phone, like login credentials to your email address, banking applications, or even personal identifying information, like SSNs, home addresses, and so on.ĪV-Test, an independent research institute running for more than 15 years, ran a test on the most popular security applications to see which ones perform the best in terms of spyware detections on Android devices. Stalkerware, sometimes known as spyware, is a set of tools (apps or software programs) that allow someone else (such as an abuser) to monitor and record your phone behavior.

Data presented by the Atlas VPN research team reveals that Android’s internal Google Play Protect service detects only 31% of stalkerware threats.

Bitdefender google play