Pranshu Sikka, Mumbai: From laptops to your personal computers, the threat of viruses has now percolated to the cell phone in your pocket. With more and more people becoming aware about the security of their computers, troublemakers have now turned to mobile phones to spread viruses and steal personal information.

There has been a sharp rise in smartphones users, and now criminals are targetting these users to spread viruses and obtain classified information. Typically, users would receive a Multimedia Message or MMS with a luring header.

Once opened, it would install malware on your phone and cause extensive damage, ranging from corrupting your phone to transmitting personal information to a remote repository.

"It can bring down your phone book and also start downloading premium services like dialers and tunes from service provider by itself.This will inflict a monetary loss as well as you will lose your contact book," Country Manager, Fortinet (India), Vishak Raman said.

The virus sends out a malicious MMS to all the contacts in the phone book of the infected handset. It also sends similar malware to any bluetooth or other wireless service enabled mobile phone, thus multiplying at a rapid pace.

Experts say that although user awareness is paramount to protect your handset against such viruses, it would at sometime also become the service provider's obligation to ensure the safety of data being transmitted on their servers.

And the pace at which smartphones users are multiplying, it seems regulations will soon come into effect.