Proprietary Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

Proprietary Software Is Often Malware

Proprietary software, also called nonfree software, means software that doesn't respect users' freedom and community. A proprietary program puts its developer or owner in a position of power over its users. This power is in itself an injustice.

The point of this page is that the initial injustice of proprietary software often leads to further injustices: malicious functionalities.

Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate.

Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to be had.

As of April, 2019, the pages in this directory list around 400 instances of malicious functionalities (with more than 450 references to back them up), but there are surely thousands more we don't know about.

Injustices or techniques	Products or companies
Addictions Back doors (1) Censorship Coverups Deception DRM (2) Incompatibility Insecurity Interference Jails (3) Manipulation Sabotage Subscriptions Surveillance Tethers (4) Tyrants (5) In the pipe	Appliances Cars Games Mobiles Webpages Adobe Amazon Apple Google Microsoft
Back door: any feature of a program that enables someone who is not supposed to be in control of the computer where it is installed to send it commands. Digital restrictions management, or “DRM”: functionalities designed to restrict what users can do with the data in their computers. Jail: system that imposes censorship on application programs. Tether: functionality that requires permanent (or very frequent) connection to a server. Tyrant: system that rejects any operating system not “authorized” by the manufacturer.

Injustices or techniques

Products or companies

Back door: any feature of a program that enables someone who is not supposed to be in control of the computer where it is installed to send it commands.
Digital restrictions management, or “DRM”: functionalities designed to restrict what users can do with the data in their computers.
Jail: system that imposes censorship on application programs.
Tether: functionality that requires permanent (or very frequent) connection to a server.
Tyrant: system that rejects any operating system not “authorized” by the manufacturer.

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

Skype refuses to say whether it can eavesdrop on calls.

That almost certainly means it can do so.
Apple is putting DRM on iPhone batteries, and the system proprietary software turns off certain features when batteries are replaced other than by Apple.
Out of 21 gratis Android antivirus apps that were tested by security researchers, eight failed to detect a test virus. All of them asked for dangerous permissions or contained advertising trackers, with seven being more risky than the average of the 100 most popular Android apps.

Note that the article refers to these proprietary apps as “free”. It should have said “gratis” instead.
Many unscrupulous mobile-app developers keep finding ways to bypass user's settings, regulations, and privacy-enhancing features of the operating system, in order to gather as much private data as they possibly can.

Thus, we can't trust rules against spying. What we can trust is having control over the software we run.
Google “Assistant” records users' conversations even when it is not supposed to listen. Thus, when one of Google's subcontractors discloses a thousand confidential voice recordings, users were easily identified from these recordings.

Since Google “Assistant” uses proprietary software, there is no way to see or control what it records or sends.

Rather than trying to better control the use of recordings, Google should not record or listen to the person's voice. It should only get commands that the user wants to send to some Google service.