LifeHacker shows you how to build your own walled garden, with help from Malware Detection Software.

There's a recent post at Lifehacker called "How can I Tell if an Android App is Malware?". Just the question alone is hilarious to me as an iPhone user.

I have read and heard taunts from Android users all telling the iPhone community that we're idiots for allowing "Big Brother" to filter our apps into an Apple-controlled walled garden. Yet, part of that wall is the App review process, in which submitted apps are tested to make sure they do not interact with any private documents of other apps, and that they only access system information (which includes user data) through proper means. (Those "proper means" include asking the operating system for the data, and the OS asking the user if it's OK. An example of this is Location Services. The app should ask the OS "Could we know the current location?" and the OS presents the dialogue box: "AppName wants to share your location. Allow/Don't Allow". If you can see no real reason for, say, Angry Birds, to share your location, you click "Don't Allow" and the app has to suffer in ignorance. If you allow it, they can broadcast it as they please.

On Android, the "open" alternative, any app can access any part of the OS, data, or other apps, and do anything it feels like. (Anything the developer programmed it to, actually, but I like to think of programs as sentient beings. Blame TRON.) If you have your credit card numbers stored in a data manager, any app can pry into that data and send the information to anyplace it wants to, without you knowing it. Thus, the need for malware detectors on Android. The only problem is, there is no clearinghouse for apps to go through to be vetted, so the only way to know if some rogue process is digging through your dirty laundry is to install an app to continuously monitor all activity and compare it to a set of "normal" activity and guess if it's OK for that to happen. So, only when something bad happens will your Malware Protection Software jump in to save you. If the hack is written well enough, this may be quite a long time after your data has been compromised.

So, the choice is yours: Live in the policed garden of polite, well-behaved and vetted apps, or grab a shotgun, circle the wagons, and head for the wild west where you're on your own.

Call me a wimp, but I'm not ready to take on every Android hacker in the world single-handedly.