Lookout Mobile Security has come up with its latest project app, called the Threat Tracker, to enlighten you about the prevailing mobile threats.
The app is meant to help people understand that mobile threats do exist, explained Derek Halliday, senior product manager for Security at Lookout.

What does the app actually do? Once it launches, you need to tap the home screen and the app jumps to a spinning blue globe of Earth.

The green dots then shown on the globe represent people around the world that Lookout says it has protected from threats. You can drag the globe around to see how different parts of the world are affected.

There’s a timeline chart of mobile malware threats over the past two weeks below the globe. It gets updated every hour.

Slide your finger along it to change the map of blocked threats above. The app does not tell you in which countries the top threats are prominent though.

The link in the upper left corner of the app goes to the Lookout Mobile Security listing in the Android Market, and the little question mark explains the app’s features. The ‘i‘ in the upper right corner shrinks the globe and pulls up more information on threats.

A slider shows the percentage of spyware versus malware and below that are the top three threats over the past two weeks. Tap one to get an explanation of what the threat is and what it does.

At one point of time, the top mobile threats according to Lookout are RuPaidMarket, Depositmobi, and Legacy. The first two send premium SMS without permission, a growing threat on smartphones of all kinds.

Legacy contains a Trojan that exploits a vulnerability on some Androids to gain control of the device. Halliday admitted that it doesn’t do much now, but said that more of Lookout’s security data would be revealed in future updates to the app.

It was originally created by a Lookout summer intern in 2011.