Proprietary Software Is Often Malware

As of October, 2019, the pages in this directory list around 400 instances of malicious functionalities (with more than 500 references to back them up), but there are surely thousands more we don't know about.

Users of proprietary software are defenseless against these forms of mistreatment. The way to avoid them is by insisting on free (freedom-respecting) software. Since free software is controlled by its users, they have a pretty good defense against malicious software functionality.

Latest additions

• Some social networking apps are designed to get users addicted. These try to merge into your daily routine by exploiting social pressure and your natural desire for socialization, converting habitual gestures into thorough addiction. As already noted for games, addictiveness is essentially based on random rewards. In the present case, the rewards are messages from friends and followers, “likes,” news, interesting videos, etc. The software is designed to trigger users' desire for these rewards, and keep this desire alive as long as possible.

  • By default, notifications are sent every time a new item comes in, instead of, say, once a day. They are associated with sounds or vibrations which make them even more compelling. (Remember Pavlov's experiments with rats.) These triggers are often opt-out, and many users don't try to turn them off. They are most effective when the app is installed on a mobile device which is always on and never leaves the user. As a side effect, they may contribute to the addictiveness of “smart” phones.
  • Users are served selected material that is likely to interest them, based on profiling. (This paves the way to manipulation, by the way.)
  • The app interface is designed to make users stay on the site as long as possible, using infinite scrolling for example.
  • The company that owns the social network tries to cover users' needs as extensively as possible, by acquiring other companies if needed. Once users have concentrated most of their online activities and a lot of their personal data on a single platform (or a set of platforms that belong to the same group), they find it almost impossible to leave. And even if they wanted to, they would have a hard time digging out the relevant options, and the app would aggressively nag them to stay.

  A good way to minimize the risk of addiction, short of avoiding social media altogether, is to turn off notifications and leave as little as possible of your own data on the platform.

• Safari occasionally sends browsing data from Apple devices in China to the Tencent Safe Browsing service, to check URLs that possibly correspond to “fraudulent” websites. Since Tencent collaborates with the Chinese government, its Safe Browsing black list most certainly contains the websites of political opponents. By linking the requests originating from single IP addresses, the government can identify dissenters in China and Hong Kong, thus endangering their lives.

• Apple plans to require that all application software for MacOS be approved by Apple first.

  Offering a checking service as an option could be useful and would not be wrong. Requiring users to get Apple's approval is tyranny. Apple says the check will only look for malware (not counting the malware that is part of the operating system), but Apple could change that policy step by step. Or perhaps Apple will define malware to include any app that China does not like.

  For free software, this means users will need to get Apple's approval after compilation. This amounts to a system of surveilling the use of free programs.

• The Chinese Communist Party's “Study the Great Nation” app requires users to grant it access to the phone's microphone, photos, text messages, contacts, and internet history, and the Android version was found to contain a back-door allowing developers to run any code they wish in the users' phone, as “superusers.” Downloading and using this app is mandatory at some workplaces.

  Note: The Washington Post version of the article (partly obfuscated, but readable after copy-pasting in a text editor) includes a clarification saying that the tests were only performed on the Android version of the app, and that, according to Apple, “this kind of ‘superuser’ surveillance could not be conducted on Apple's operating system.”

• Apple censors the Taiwan flag in iOS on behalf of the Chinese government. When the region is set to Hong Kong, this flag is not visible in the emoji selection widget but is still accessible. When the region is set to mainland China, all attempts to display it will result in the “empty emoji” icon as if the flag never existed.

  Thus, not only does Apple use the App Store as an instrument of censorship, it also uses the iThing operating system for that purpose.