New figures have been released that show over 50,000 unique instances of malware have been found on the Android mobile operating system in the past three months, a rise of over 1,000 per cent.

According to Finnish security firm F-Secure the majority of these pieces of malware come from Russia and China and target people in these countries by dialling premium-rate numbers.

The news will be worrying for Google, the developers of the OS, after one of their executives, Chris DiBona, claimed this time last year that Android did not have a virus problem. The company launched Bouncer earlier this year, a new security system that scans new and existing apps in the Google Play store, but the new malware has managed to bypass this system.

Three out of every four smartphones sold in the third quarter featured the Android OS. Around two thirds of new malware detected in the last quarter was found on Android, with the second highest amount of detection coming surprisingly on Symbian, the OS that was recently ditched by Nokia in favour of Windows Phone.

Written and presented by Alfred Joyner