New technology always comes at a price. Not only is it a higher dollar price, but usually some new form of problem comes too – with cell phones and Internet service, that bad item is malware!

A recent report has revealed an increase in Android malware, including an eavesdropping trojan, along with a jump in the theft of digital currencies.

Android, with close to 50 per cent market share, has caught the attention of cyber criminals, who are increasingly using premium SMS malware to make money.

This form of malware has become particularly attractive to cyber thieves, as it lets a mobile operator do a lot of the work for them, processing the transactions automatically to any place in the world. They found that the ease of use involved means that many criminals are using this over stealing credit card details, particularly as the fraudulent payments often go unnoticed for months.

Unauthorized premium text messages are the least of Android smartphone owners' worries, however. They mentioned a trojan it investigated in July, which records phone conversations and text messages before sending them to the cyber-criminal to uncover personal information for identity theft.

Of all the malicious Android apps out there, they found that Angry Birds Rio Unlocker was the most popular, thanks to the success of the Angry Birds games.

Digital Currencies Targeted

Digital currencies, such as Facebook Credits, Xbox Points, Zynga Coins and Bitcoins, are now seen by some cyber criminals as just as valuable as cold hard cash, and often significantly easier for them to illegally acquire. AVG highlighted an incident from June where nearly $500,000 was stolen from a digital wallet on an individual's computer.

Other findings in the report show that rogue anti-virus scanners are the most active threat on the web, that exploit toolkits account for more than 30 per cent of threat activity on malicious websites, with Fragus and Blackhole being the most popular variants, and that the US remains the largest source of spam, followed by India and Brazil.

Cybercrime is becoming an increasing problem. The growth of new targets, such as smartphones, tablets and digital currencies, has helped cyber criminals, who are taking advantage of the slow uptake of anti-virus software that protects these resources.

Once again, watch your *** when it comes to your personal information. If you make it available – they will steal it!