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As is the case with the onward march of technology, many users have upgraded from traditional mobile phones to smartphones. However, this has increased worries that users could be the victims of the same virus and malware problems that have plagued personal computers for years.

Whilst it’s commonplace to take out mobile phone insurance cover against breaking down, accidental damage or having it stolen, smartphones pose a different issue – that of identity theft.

When using an iPhone or other smartphone, it is simple enough to check your bank balance, update a social networking site or access your email. A lost phone can prove to be a goldmine if it happens to fall into a fraudster’s hands.

However, leading industry figures have declared that they are keeping one step ahead of cyber criminals.

"A mobile phone is not a good candidate for a botnet like you have in the PC world, where it can enslave your computer and let it do work to send spam or whatever. But a mobile phone is a great candidate to steal user data from."

Although the mobile phone industry has been aware of threats such as malware and viruses for years, very few reports of concrete threats to users exist. This is thought to be because of the numbers of smartphones in circulation; fraudsters are likely to target devices that are widespread, and there are many more users of personal computers than there are of smartphones.

Security companies have learned much from identity theft and malware on personal computers, and have put in place lots of mechanisms to block spam messages and viruses. Many service providers now have security in place to prevent spam ever being received by your smartphone.

As they see it, their main concern is to prevent the loss or theft of your phone. Dave Cole, a senior director at Symantec Corp, said: "Your average consumer's main concern about their mobile phone is about losing it or having it stolen,"