Proprietary Surveillance - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

Proprietary Surveillance - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
Skip to main text
JOIN THE FSF
GNU
Operating System
Supported by the
Free Software Foundation
Site navigation
Skip
ABOUT GNU
PHILOSOPHY
LICENSES
EDUCATION
SOFTWARE
DISTROS
DOCS
MALWARE
HELP GNU
AUDIO & VIDEO
GNU ART
FUN
GNU'S WHO?
SOFTWARE DIRECTORY
HARDWARE
Malware
By type /
Proprietary Surveillance
Nonfree (proprietary) software is very often malware (designed to
mistreat the user). Nonfree software is controlled by its developers,
which puts them in a position of power over the users;
that is the
basic injustice
. The developers and manufacturers often exercise
that power to the detriment of the users they ought to serve.
This typically takes the form of malicious functionalities.
“How did they find out I'm a dog?”
A common malicious functionality is to snoop on the user. This page
records
clearly established cases of proprietary software that
spies on or tracks users
. Manufacturers even refuse
to
say
whether they snoop on users for the state
All appliances and applications that are tethered to a specific
server are snoopers by nature. We do not list them here because they
have their own page:
Proprietary
Tethers
There is a similar site named
Spyware Watchdog
that classifies spyware programs, so that users can be more aware that they are installing spyware.
If you know of an example that ought to be in this page but isn't
here, please write
to

to inform us. Please include the URL of a trustworthy reference or two,
preferably in English, to serve as specific substantiation.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Spyware in Laptops and Desktops
BIOS
HP
MacOS
Windows
Spyware on Mobiles
All “Smart” Phones
iThings
Android Telephones
E-Readers
Spyware in Applications
Desktop Apps
Mobile Apps
Online Conferencing
Games
Spyware in Connected Equipment
TV Sets
Cameras
Toys
Drones
Other Appliances
Wearables
“Smart” Watches
Vehicles
Virtual Reality
Spyware on the Web
Chrome
JavaScript
Flash
Spyware in Networks
Introduction
For decades, the Free Software movement has been denouncing the
abusive surveillance machine of
proprietary software
companies such as
Microsoft
and
Apple

In the recent years, this tendency to watch people has spread across
industries, not only in the software business, but also in the
hardware. Moreover, it also spread dramatically away from the
keyboard, in the mobile computing industry, in the office,
at
, in transportation systems, and in the classroom.
Aggregate or anonymized data
Many companies, in their privacy policy, have a clause that claims
they share aggregate, non-personally identifiable information with
third parties/partners. Such claims are worthless, for several
reasons:
They could change the policy at any time.
They can twist the words by distributing an “aggregate” of
“anonymized” data which can be reidentified and attributed to
individuals.
The raw data they don't normally distribute can be taken by
data breaches.
The raw data they don't normally distribute can be taken by
subpoena.
Therefore, we must not be distracted by companies' statements of
what they will
do
with the data they collect. The wrong is that
they collect it at all.
Latest additions
Entries in each category are in reverse chronological order, based
on the dates of publication of linked articles.
The latest additions are listed on the
main page
of the
Malware section.
Spyware in Laptops and Desktops
#OSSpyware
Windows
#SpywareInWindows
2026-01
Windows encrypts disks for “security,” but
reports all the encryption keys to Microsoft
so that the encryption
doesn't provide real security. Once Microsoft has these keys, it can't
refuse to give them to the FBI. However, for real security you need
to be able to use your own choice of keys. Microsoft stops users from
doing that.
2025-03
Microsoft is
tightening the chains that force Windows useds to sign into their
Microsoft account
[*], thus identifying themselves. We suspect this
is an intentional strategy to avoid inspiring a lot of resistance
all at once: leave openings to escape identification, then gradually
close them.
Enough is enough!
[*]
Why “useds”? Because running Windows is
not you using Windows; it is Windows using you.
2024-07
In its default configuration, Windows 11 now
uploads users' files and personal information to Microsoft's
“cloud”
without asking permission to do so. This is
presented as a convenient backup method, but if the allotted storage
capacity is exceeded, the user will need to buy more space, increasing
Microsoft's profit.
However, this small profit is probably not the company's major
reason for making cloud storage the default. Here is an excerpt
from the
Microsoft Services agreement
(Section 2b):
To the extent necessary to provide the Services to
you and others, to protect you and the Services, and to improve
Microsoft products and services, you grant to Microsoft a worldwide
and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content,
for example, to make copies of, retain, transmit, reformat,
display, and distribute via communication tools Your Content on the
Services.
We strongly suspect that the backed-up material is used to feed
Microsoft's greedy “AI.” In addition, it is most likely
analysed to better profile users in order to flood them with targeted
ads, thereby generating more profit.
Users, on the other hand, are at the mercy of any
entity that demands their data, let alone of any cracker
that breaks into Microsoft's servers. They
must
escape from this sick environment, and install a sane
free/libre
system
2023-02
As soon as it boots, and without asking any permission,
Windows
11 starts to send data to online servers
. The user's personal
details, location or hardware information are reported to Microsoft and
other companies to be used as telemetry data. All of this is done is
the background, and users have no easy way to prevent it—unless
they switch the computer offline.
2023-01
Microsoft
released an “update” that installs a surveillance
program
on users' computers to gather data on some installed
programs for Microsoft's benefit. The update is rolling out
automatically, and the program runs “one time silently.”
2022-09
Windows 11 Home and Pro now
require internet connection and a Microsoft account
to
complete the installation. Windows 11 Pro had an option to create
a local account instead, but the option has been removed. This
account can (and most certainly will) be used for surveillance
and privacy violations. Thankfully, a free software tool named
Rufus
can bypass those
requirements, or help users install a
free operating system
instead.
2019-12
Microsoft is
tricking
users to create an account on their network
to be able to install
and use the Windows operating system, which is malware. The account can
be used for surveillance and/or violating people's rights in many ways,
such as turning their purchased software to a subscription product.
2017-12
HP's proprietary operating system
includes a
proprietary keyboard driver with a key logger in it
2017-10
Windows 10 telemetry program sends information to Microsoft about
the user's computer and their use of the computer.
Furthermore, for users who installed the
fourth stable build of Windows 10, called the
“Creators Update,” Windows maximized the surveillance
by force setting the telemetry mode to “Full”
The
“Full” telemetry mode
allows Microsoft Windows
engineers to access, among other things, registry keys
which can contain sensitive information like administrator's login
password
2017-02
DRM-restricted files can be used to
identify people browsing through Tor
. The vulnerability exists
only if you use Windows.
2016-11
By default, Windows 10
sends
debugging information to Microsoft, including core dumps
. Microsoft
now distributes them to another company.
2016-08
In order to increase Windows 10's install base, Microsoft
blatantly disregards user choice and privacy
2016-03
Windows 10 comes with 13 screens of snooping options
, all enabled
by default, and turning them off would be daunting to most users.
2016-01
It appears
Windows 10 sends data to Microsoft about what applications are
running
2015-12
Microsoft has
backdoored its disk encryption
2015-11
A downgrade to Windows 10 deleted surveillance-detection
applications. Then another downgrade inserted a general spying
program. Users noticed this and complained, so Microsoft renamed it
to give users the impression it was gone
To use proprietary software is to invite such treatment.
2015-08
Intel devices will be able to listen for speech all the time, even
when “off.”
2015-08
Windows 10 sends identifiable information to Microsoft
, even if
a user turns off its Bing search and Cortana features, and activates
the privacy-protection settings.
2015-07
Windows 10
ships with default settings that show no regard for the privacy of
its users
, giving Microsoft the “right” to snoop on
the users' files, text input, voice input, location info, contacts,
calendar records and web browsing history, as well as automatically
connecting the machines to open hotspots and showing targeted ads.
We can suppose Microsoft looks at users' files for the US government
on demand, though the “privacy policy” does not explicitly
say so. Will it look at users' files for the Chinese government
on demand?
2015-06
Microsoft uses Windows 10's “privacy policy”
to overtly impose a “right” to look at
users' files at any time. Windows 10 full disk encryption
gives Microsoft a key
Thus, Windows is overt malware in regard to surveillance, as in
other issues.
The unique “advertising ID” for each user enables
other companies to track the browsing of each specific user.
It's as if Microsoft has deliberately chosen to make Windows 10
maximally evil on every dimension; to make a grab for total power
over anyone that doesn't drop Windows now.
2014-10
It only gets worse with time.
Windows 10 requires users to give permission for total snooping
including their files, their commands, their text input, and their
voice input.
2014-05
Microsoft SkyDrive allows the NSA to directly examine users'
data
2014-01
Baidu's Japanese-input and Chinese-input apps spy on users
2013-07
Spyware in older versions of Windows:
Windows Update snoops on the user
Windows 8.1 snoops on local searches
. And there's a
secret NSA
key in Windows
, whose functions we don't know.
Microsoft's snooping on users did not start with Windows 10.
There's a lot more
Microsoft malware
MacOS
#SpywareInMacOS
2020-11
Apple has
implemented
a malware in its computers that imposes surveillance
on users
and reports users' computing to Apple.
The reports are even unencrypted and they've been leaking this
data for two years already. This malware is reporting to Apple what
user opens what program at what time. It also gives Apple
power to sabotage users' computing.
2018-09
Adware Doctor, an ad blocker for MacOS,
reports
the user's browsing history
2014-11
Apple has made various
MacOS programs send files to Apple servers without asking
permission
. This exposes the files to Big Brother and perhaps
to other snoops.
It also demonstrates how you can't trust proprietary software,
because even if today's version doesn't have a malicious functionality,
tomorrow's version might add it. The developer won't remove the
malfeature unless many users push back hard, and the users can't
remove it themselves.
2014-10
MacOS automatically
sends to Apple servers unsaved documents being edited
. The
things you have not decided to save are
even more sensitive
than the things you have stored in files.
2014-10
Apple admits the
spying in a search facility
, but there's a lot
more snooping
that Apple has not talked about
2014-10
Various operations in
the latest MacOS send reports to Apple
servers.
2014-01
Spotlight search
sends users' search terms to Apple.
There's a lot more
iThing spyware
, and
Apple malware
BIOS
#SpywareInBIOS
2015-09
Lenovo stealthily installed crapware and spyware via
BIOS
on Windows installs. Note that the specific
sabotage method Lenovo used did not affect GNU/Linux; also, a
“clean” Windows install is not really clean since
Microsoft puts in its
own malware
HP
#SpywareInHP
2025-07
HP has recently started pushing a
spyware program called HPMediaNetwork.exe
into users'
computers exploiting a Windows universal back door via
Windows Update. The software, which is designed to serve
personalized pop-up advertisements on the user's screen,
runs in the background to collect device and users' data that
HP sells to advertising companies
. The malfeature is
implemented at both hardware and software levels, and
opting
out does not block ads
entirely.
Users can avoid this and other kinds of
mistreatment by choosing hardware that comes with
free
specifications and designs
, and by installing only
free software
in their
computers.
Spyware on Mobiles
#SpywareOnMobiles
All “Smart” Phones
#SpywareInTelephones
2021-06
El
Salvador Dictatorship's Chivo wallet is spyware
, it's a
proprietary program that breaks users' freedom and spies on people;
demands personal data such as the national ID number and does face
recognition, and it is bad security for its data. It also asks for
almost every malware permission in people's smartphones.
The article criticizes it for faults in “data
protection”, though
“data protection”
is the wrong approach to privacy anyway
2021-06
Almost
all proprietary health apps harvest users' data
, including
sensitive health information, tracking identifiers, and cookies to
track user activities. Some of these applications are tracking users
across different platforms.
2021-01
As of 2021, WhatsApp (one of Facebook's subsidiaries) is
forcing
its users to hand over sensitive personal data
to its parent
company. This increases Facebook's power over users, and further
jeopardizes people's privacy and security.
Instead of WhatsApp you can use
GNU Jami
, which is
free software and will not collect your data.
2020-06
Most apps are malware, but
Trump's campaign app, like Modi's campaign app, is
especially nasty malware, helping companies snoop on users as well
as snooping on them itself
The article says that Biden's app has a less manipulative overall
approach, but that does not tell us whether it has functionalities we
consider malicious, such as sending data the user has not explicitly
asked to send.
2018-09
Tiny Lab Productions, along with online ad businesses run
by Google, Twitter and three other companies are facing a lawsuit
for
violating people's privacy by collecting their data from mobile games
and handing over these data to other companies/advertisers
2016-01
The natural extension of monitoring
people through “their” phones is
proprietary software to make sure they can't “fool”
the monitoring
2015-10
According to Edward Snowden,
agencies can take over
smartphones
by sending hidden text messages which enable
them to turn the phones on and off, listen to the microphone,
retrieve geo-location data from the GPS, take photographs, read
text messages, read call, location and web browsing history, and
read the contact list. This malware is designed to disguise itself
from investigation.
2013-11
The NSA can tap data in smart phones, including iPhones,
Android, and BlackBerry
. While there is not much
detail here, it seems that this does not operate via
the universal back door that we know nearly all portable
phones have. It may involve exploiting various bugs. There are
lots of bugs in the phones' radio software
2013-07
Portable phones with GPS
will send their GPS location on remote command, and users cannot stop
them
. (The US says it will eventually require all new portable phones
to have GPS.)
iThings
#SpywareIniThings
2025-07
An app called ICEBlock tried to set up anonymous posting and
anonymous access to data about where US deportation thugs are
operating. It didn't keep records about who was using it—but
Apple's own records
would be enough to make them vulnerable to
snooping by the US government to find who uses the app.
Apple later
removed ICEBlock
from its store at the request of the US
government.
2022-11
The iMonster app store client programs collect many kinds of data
about the user's actions and private communications. “Do not
track” options are available, but tracking doesn't stop if
the user activates them: Apple keeps on collecting data for itself,
although it claims not to send it to third parties.
Apple is being sued
for that.
2021-05
Apple
is moving its Chinese customers' iCloud data to a datacenter controlled
by the Chinese government
. Apple is already storing the encryption
keys on these servers, obeying Chinese authority, making all Chinese
user data available to the government.
2020-09
snoops
on Instagram
users by surreptitously turning on the device's
camera.
2020-04
Apple whistleblower Thomas Le Bonniec reports that Apple
made a practice of surreptitiously activating the Siri software to
record users' conversations when they had not activated Siri
This was not just occasional, it was systematic practice.
His job was to listen to these recordings, in a group that made
transcripts of them. He does not believes that Apple has ceased this
practice.
The only reliable way to prevent this is, for the program that
controls access to the microphone to decide when the user has
“activated” any service, to be free software, and the
operating system under it free as well. This way, users could make
sure Apple can't listen to them.
2019-10
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.
2019-05
In spite of Apple's supposed commitment to
privacy, iPhone apps contain trackers that are busy at night
sending users' personal information to third parties
The article mentions specific examples: Microsoft OneDrive,
Intuit's Mint, Nike, Spotify, The Washington Post, The Weather
Channel (owned by IBM), the crime-alert service Citizen, Yelp
and DoorDash. But it is likely that most nonfree apps contain
trackers. Some of these send personally identifying data such as phone
fingerprint, exact location, email address, phone number or even
delivery address (in the case of DoorDash). Once this information
is collected by the company, there is no telling what it will be
used for.
2017-11
The DMCA and the EU Copyright Directive make it
illegal to study how iOS cr…apps spy on users
, because
this would require circumventing the iOS DRM.
2017-09
In the latest iThings system,
“turning off” WiFi and Bluetooth the obvious way
doesn't really turn them off
. A more advanced way really does turn
them off—only until 5am. That's Apple for you—“We
know you want to be spied on”.
2017-02
Apple proposes
fingerprint-scanning touch screen
—which would mean no way
to use it without having your fingerprints taken. Users would have
no way to tell whether the phone is snooping on them.
2016-11
iPhones
send
lots of personal data to Apple's servers
. Big Brother can get
them from there.
2016-09
The iMessage app on iThings
tells
a server every phone number that the user types into it
; the
server records these numbers for at least 30 days.
2015-09
iThings automatically upload to Apple's servers all the photos
and videos they make.
iCloud Photo Library stores every photo and video you
take, and keeps them up to date on all your devices. Any edits you
make are automatically updated everywhere. […]
(From
Apple's iCloud
information
as accessed on 24 Sep 2015.) The iCloud feature is
activated by the
startup of iOS
. The term “cloud” means “please
don't ask where.”
There is a way to
deactivate
iCloud
, but it's active by default so it still counts as a
surveillance functionality.
Unknown people apparently took advantage of this to
get
nude photos of many celebrities
. They needed to break Apple's
security to get at them, but NSA can access any of them through
PRISM
2014-09
Apple can, and regularly does,
remotely extract some data from iPhones for the state
This may have improved with
iOS 8 security improvements
; but
not as much as Apple claims
2014-07
Several “features” of iOS seem to exist
for no possible purpose other than surveillance
. Here is the
Technical presentation
2014-01
The
iBeacon
lets stores determine exactly where the iThing is, and
get other info too.
2013-12
Either Apple helps the NSA snoop on all the data in an iThing, or it
is totally incompetent
2013-08
The iThing also
tells Apple its geolocation
by default, though that can be
turned off.
2012-10
There is also a feature for web sites to track users, which is
enabled by default
. (That article talks about iOS 6, but it is
still true in iOS 7.)
2012-04
Users cannot make an Apple ID (
necessary
to install even gratis apps
) without giving a valid
email address and receiving the verification code Apple sends
to it.
Android Telephones
#SpywareInAndroid
2025-12
Google has rolled out a new software app
which
allows employers to log all messages
sent through the
Rich
Communication Services
(a newer replacement for SMS messages) on
company-owned phones provided to employees, amplifying the surveillance
workers are subjected to.
“Bossware” as it's called,
explicitly requires nullifying user agency
in favor of a
third-party (the boss), and therefore requires proprietary
software.
2024-11
The Pixel 9 “smart”phone
frequently updates Google servers with its location and current
configuration
along with personally identifiable data, raising
concerns about user privacy. Moreover, it communicates
with services that are not in use, and periodically attempts to
download experimental, possibly insecure software. The system does
not inform the user that it is doing all this.
There is hope, however: it is possible to
replace the original Android
operating system with a deGoogled version
in Pixel phones up to
8a, and in phones from many other brands. No doubt that the Pixel 9
will be supported soon.
2020-12
Baidu apps were
caught collecting sensitive personal data
that can be used for
lifetime tracking of users, and putting them in danger. More than 1.4
billion people worldwide are affected by these proprietary apps, and
users' privacy is jeopardized by this surveillance tool. Data collected
by Baidu may be handed over to the Chinese government, possibly
putting Chinese people in danger.
2020-10
Samsung is forcing its smartphone users in Hong Kong (and Macau)
to
use a public DNS in Mainland China
, using software update released
in September 2020, which causes many unease and privacy concerns.
2020-04
Xiaomi phones
report
many actions the user takes
: starting an app, looking at a folder,
visiting a website, listening to a song. They send device identifying
information too.
Other nonfree programs snoop too. For instance, Spotify and
other streaming dis-services make a dossier about each user, and
they make
users identify themselves to pay
. Out, out, damned Spotify!
Forbes exonerates the same wrongs when the culprits are not Chinese,
but we condemn this no matter who does it.
2018-12
Facebook's app got “consent” to
upload call logs automatically from Android phones
while disguising
what the “consent” was for.
2018-11
An Android phone was observed to track location even while
in airplane mode. It didn't send the location data while in
airplane mode. Instead,
it saved up the data, and sent them all later
2017-11
Android tracks location for Google
even when “location services” are turned off, even when
the phone has no SIM card
2016-11
Some portable phones
are
sold with spyware sending lots of data to China
2016-09
Google Play (a component of Android)
tracks the users' movements without their permission
Even if you disable Google Maps and location tracking, you must
disable Google Play itself to completely stop the tracking. This is
yet another example of nonfree software pretending to obey the user,
when it's actually doing something else. Such a thing would be almost
unthinkable with free software.
2015-07
Samsung phones come with
apps
that users can't delete
, and they send so much data that their
transmission is a substantial expense for users. Said transmission,
not wanted or requested by the user, clearly must constitute spying
of some kind.
2014-03
Samsung's back door
provides access to any file on the system.
2013-08
Spyware in Android phones (and Windows? laptops): The Wall Street
Journal (in an article blocked from us by a paywall) reports that
the FBI can remotely activate the GPS and microphone in Android phones
and laptops
(presumably Windows laptops). Here is
more info
2013-07
Spyware is present in some Android devices when they are
sold. Some Motorola phones, made when this company was owned
by Google, use a modified version of Android that
sends personal data to Motorola
2013-07
A Motorola phone
listens for voice all the time
2013-02
Google Play intentionally sends app developers
the personal details of users that install the app
Merely asking the “consent” of users is not enough to
legitimize actions like this. At this point, most users have stopped
reading the “Terms and Conditions” that spell out what
they are “consenting” to. Google should clearly and
honestly identify the information it collects on users, instead of
hiding it in an obscurely worded EULA.
However, to truly protect people's privacy, we must prevent Google
and other companies from getting this personal information in the
first place!
2011-11
Some manufacturers add a
hidden general surveillance package such as Carrier IQ
E-Readers
#SpywareInElectronicReaders
2016-03
E-books can contain JavaScript code, and
sometimes this code snoops on readers
2014-10
Adobe made “Digital Editions,”
the e-reader used by most US libraries,
send lots of data to Adobe
. Adobe's “excuse”: it's
needed to check DRM!
2012-12
Spyware in many e-readers—not only the Kindle:
they
report even which page the user reads at what time
Spyware in Applications
#SpywareInApplications
2025-10
Universe Browser, tied to online gambling platforms
in Asia and marketed as a “privacy browser,”
installs various malicious functionalities
in the user's
computer.
2025-02
Outlook has become a “data collection and ad delivery
service”
. Since Outlook is now integrated with
Microsoft “cloud” services, and doesn't support
end-to-end encryption, the company has full access to users'
emails, contacts, and calendar events. Microsoft may also
retrieve credentials associated with any third-party services
that are synchronized with Outlook. This trove of personal data
enables Microsoft, as well as its commercial partners, to flood
users with targeted ads, and possibly to train “artificial
intelligences.” Even worse, this data is available to any
government that can force Microsoft to hand it over.
2024-11
As of 2021,
preinstallation of Russian-made proprietary software has
been mandatory
on new computers and “smart”
devices sold in Russia, under threat of a fine for the retailer, and
the list of mandatory applications keeps
growing
. This gives the government a convenient way to
censor information, spy on people's online activity, and restrict
free speech
2023-06
Edge
sends
the URLs of images the user views to Microsoft's servers
by
default, supposedly to “enhance” them. And these images
may
end up on the NSA's servers
Microsoft claims its nonfree browser sends the URLs without
identifying you, which cannot be true, since at least your IP
address is known to the server if you don't take extra measures.
Either way, such enhancer service is unjust because any image editing
should
be done on your own computer using installed free software
The article describes how to disable sending the URLs. That makes
a change for the better, but we suggest that you instead switch to a
freedom-respecting browser with additional privacy features such as
IceCat
2023-05
Some employers are
forcing employees to run “monitoring software”
on
their computers. These extremely intrusive proprietary programs
can take screenshots at regular intervals, log keystrokes,
record audio and video, etc. Such practices have been shown to
deteriorate employees' well-being
, and trade unions in the
European union have voiced their concerns about them. The requirement
for employee's consent, which exists in some countries, is a sham
because most often the employee is not free to refuse. In short,
these practices should be abolished.
2022-05
A worldwide investigation found that
most of the applications that school districts
recommended for remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic
track
and collect personal data from children as young as below the age of
five
. These applications, and their websites, send the collected
information to ad giants such as Facebook and Google, and they are
still being used in the classrooms even after some of the schools
reopened.
2018-05
The Verify browser extension by Storyful
spies
on the reporters that use it
Desktop Apps
#SpywareInDesktopApps
2024-11
Windows Recall is a feature of Microsoft's Copilot tool that
comes preinstalled on AI-specialized computers.
Recall records everything users do on their computer
and allows
them to search the recordings, but it has numerous security flaws and
poses a risk to privacy. As Recall cannot be completely uninstalled,
disabling it doesn't eliminate the risk because it can be reactivated
by malware or misconfiguration.
Microsoft says that
Recall will not take screenshots of digitally restricted
media
. Meanwhile, it stores sensitive user information such as
passwords and bank account numbers, showing that whereas Microsoft
worries somewhat about corporate interests, it couldn't care less
about user privacy.
2024-06
In its terms of service, Adobe gives itself permission to
spy on material that people upload to its servers
, supposedly for
moderation purposes. In spite of Adobe's denial, we can expect
that sooner or later it will use this material to train its so-called
“artificial intelligence,” and will claim that by agreeing
to the terms of service users gave it the right to do so.
2020-11
Microsoft's Office 365 suite enables employers
to
snoop on each employee
. After
a public outburst, Microsoft stated that
it
would remove this capability
. Let's hope so.
2019-12
Some Avast and AVG extensions
for Firefox and Chrome were found to
snoop on users' detailed browsing habits
. Mozilla and Google
removed the problematic extensions from their stores, but this shows
once more how unsafe nonfree software can be. Tools that are supposed
to protect a proprietary system are, instead, infecting it with
additional malware (the system itself being the original malware).
2019-04
As of April 2019, it is
no
longer possible to disable an
unscrupulous tracking anti-feature
that
reports
users when they follow ping links
in Apple Safari, Google Chrome,
Opera, Microsoft Edge and also in the upcoming Microsoft Edge that is
going to be based on Chromium.
2018-11
Foundry's graphics software
reports information to identify who is running it
. The result is
often a legal threat demanding a lot of money.
The fact that this is used for repression of forbidden sharing
makes it even more vicious.
This illustrates that making unauthorized copies of nonfree software
is not a cure for the injustice of nonfree software. It may avoid
paying for the nasty thing, but cannot make it less nasty.
Mobile Apps
#SpywareInMobileApps
2023-08
The Yandex company has started to
give away Yango taxi ride data to Russia's Federal Security Service
(FSB)
. The Russian government (and whoever else receives the
the data) thus has access to a wealth of personal information,
including who traveled where, when, and with which driver. Yandex
claims that it complies with European regulations
for data
collected in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or Israel.
But what about the rest of the world?
2023-04
The Pinduoduo app
snoops on other apps, and takes control of them
. It also installs
additional malware that is hard to remove.
2022-06
Canada has fined the company Tim Hortons for making
an app that tracks people's movements
to learn things such as
where they live, where they work, and when they visit competitors'
stores.
2022-04
New Amazon worker chat app
would
ban specific words Amazon doesn't like
, such as
“union”, “restrooms”, and “pay
raise”. If the app was free, workers could modify the program
so it acts as they wish, not how Amazon wants it.
2022-03
The nonfree app “Along,”
developed by a company controlled by Zuckerberg,
leads students to reveal to their teacher personal information
about themselves and their families. Conversations are recorded
and the collected data sent to the company, which grants itself the
right to sell it. See also
Educational Malware App “Along”
2022-01
The data broker X-Mode
bought
location data about 20,000 people collected by around 100 different
malicious apps
2021-11
A building in LA, with a supermarket in it,
demands
customers load a particular app to pay for parking in the parking
lot
, and accept pervasive surveillance. They also have the
option of entering their license plate numbers in a kiosk. That is
an injustice, too.
2021-06
apps collect biometric identifiers and biometric information from
users' smartphones
. The company behind it does whatever it wants
and collects whatever data it can.
2021-05
60%
of school apps are sending student data to potentially high-risk
third parties
, putting students and possibly all other school
workers under surveillance. This is made possible by using unsafe
and proprietary programs made by data-hungry corporations.
Please note that whether students consent to this or not,
doesn't justify the surveillance they're imposed to.
2021-04
The
WeddingWire
app saves people's wedding photos forever and hands over data
to others
, giving users no control over their personal
information/data. The app also sometimes shows old photos and
memories to users, without giving them any control over this
either.
2021-02
The proprietary program Clubhouse
is malware and a privacy disaster. Clubhouse
collects
people's personal data such as recordings of people's
conversations
, and, as a secondary problem, does not encrypt them,
which shows a bad security part of the issue.
A user's unique Clubhouse ID number and chatroom ID are transmitted
in plaintext, and Agora (the company behind the app) would likely
have access to users' raw audio, potentially providing access to
the Chinese government.
Even with good security of data transmission, collecting personal
data of people is wrong and a violation of people's privacy rights.
2021-02
Many cr…apps, developed by various
companies for various organizations, do
location tracking unknown to those companies and those
organizations
. It's actually some widely used libraries that do
the tracking.
What's unusual here is that proprietary software developer A tricks
proprietary software developers B1 … B50 into making platforms for
A to mistreat the end user.
2020-03
The Apple iOS version of Zoom
is
sending users' data to Facebook
even if the user doesn't have
a Facebook account. According to the article, Zoom and Facebook
don't even mention this surveillance on their privacy policy page,
making this an obvious violation of people's privacy even in their
own terms.
2020-03
The Alipay Health Code app
estimates whether the user has Covid-19 and
tells the cops directly
2020-01
The Amazon Ring app does
surveillance for other companies as well as for Amazon
2019-12
The ToToc messaging app seems to be a
spying tool for the government of the United Arab Emirates
Any nonfree program could be doing this, and that is a good
reason to use free software instead.
Note: this article uses the word “free” in
the sense of “gratis.”
2019-12
iMonsters and Android phones,
when used for work, give employers powerful
snooping and sabotage capabilities
if they install their own
software on the device. Many employers demand to do this. For the
employee, this is simply nonfree software, as fundamentally unjust
and as dangerous as any other nonfree software.
2019-10
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.”
2019-09
The Facebook app
tracks users even when it is turned off
, after tricking them
into giving the app broad permissions in order to use one of its
functionalities.
2019-09
Some nonfree period-tracking apps including MIA Fem and Maya
send intimate details of users' lives to Facebook
2019-09
Keeping track of who downloads a proprietary
program is a form of surveillance. There is a
proprietary program for adjusting a certain telescopic rifle sight.
A US prosecutor has demanded the list of all the 10,000 or more people
who have installed it
With a free program there would not be a list of who has installed
it.
2019-07
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.
2019-07
Many Android apps can track
users' movements even when the user says
not to allow them access to locations
This involves an apparently unintentional weakness in Android,
exploited intentionally by malicious apps.
2019-05
The Femm “fertility” app is secretly a
tool for propaganda
by natalist Christians. It spreads distrust
for contraception.
It snoops on users, too, as you must expect from nonfree
programs.
2019-05
BlizzCon 2019 imposed a
requirement to run a proprietary phone app
to be allowed into
the event.
This app is a spyware that can snoop on a lot of
sensitive data, including user's location and contact list, and has
near-complete control
over the phone.
2019-04
Data collected by menstrual and pregnancy monitoring apps is often
available to employers and insurance companies
. Even though the
data is “anonymized and aggregated,” it can easily be
traced back to the woman who uses the app.
This has harmful implications for women's rights to equal employment
and freedom to make their own pregnancy choices. Don't use
these apps, even if someone offers you a reward to do so. A
free-software app that does more or less the same thing without
spying on you is available from
F-Droid
, and
a new one is being developed
2019-04
Google tracks the movements of Android phones and iPhones
running Google apps, and sometimes
saves the data for years
Nonfree software in the phone has to be responsible for sending
the location data to Google.
2019-03
Many Android phones come with a huge number of
preinstalled nonfree apps that have access to sensitive data without
users' knowledge
. These hidden apps may either call home with
the data, or pass it on to user-installed apps that have access to
the network but no direct access to the data. This results in massive
surveillance on which the user has absolutely no control.
2019-03
The MoviePass dis-service
is planning to use face recognition to track people's eyes
to make sure they won't put their phones down or look away during
ads—and trackers.
2019-03
A study of 24 “health” apps found that 19 of them
send sensitive personal data to third parties
, which can use it
for invasive advertising or discriminating against people in poor
medical condition.
Whenever user “consent” is sought, it is buried in
lengthy terms of service that are difficult to understand. In any case,
“consent” is not sufficient to legitimize snooping.
2019-02
Facebook offered a convenient proprietary
library for building mobile apps, which also
sent personal data to Facebook
. Lots of companies built apps that
way and released them, apparently not realizing that all the personal
data they collected would go to Facebook as well.
It shows that no one can trust a nonfree program, not even the
developers of other nonfree programs.
2019-02
The AppCensus database gives information on
how Android apps use and
misuse users' personal data
. As of March 2019, nearly
78,000 have been analyzed, of which 24,000 (31%) transmit the
Advertising ID
to other companies, and
18,000 (23% of the total) link this ID to hardware identifiers
so that users cannot escape tracking by resetting it.
Collecting hardware identifiers is in apparent violation of
Google's policies. But it seems that Google wasn't aware of it,
and, once informed, was in no hurry to take action. This proves
that the policies of a development platform are ineffective at
preventing nonfree software developers from including malware in
their programs.
2019-02
Many nonfree apps have a surveillance feature for
recording all the users' actions
in interacting with the app.
2019-02
Twenty nine “beauty camera” apps that used to
be on Google Play had one or more malicious functionalities, such as
stealing users' photos instead of “beautifying” them
pushing unwanted and often malicious ads on users, and redirecting
them to phishing sites that stole their credentials. Furthermore,
the user interface of most of them was designed to make uninstallation
difficult.
Users should of course uninstall these dangerous apps if they
haven't yet, but they should also stay away from nonfree apps in
general.
All
nonfree apps carry a potential risk because
there is no easy way of knowing what they really do.
2019-02
An investigation of the 150 most popular
gratis VPN apps in Google Play found that
25% fail to protect their users' privacy
due to DNS leaks. In
addition, 85% feature intrusive permissions or functions in their
source code—often used for invasive advertising—that could
potentially also be used to spy on users. Other technical flaws were
found as well.
Moreover, a previous investigation had found that
half of
the top 10 gratis VPN apps have lousy privacy policies
(It is unfortunate that these articles talk about “free
apps.” These apps are gratis, but they are
not
free software
.)
2019-01
The Weather Channel app
stored users' locations to the company's server
. The company is
being sued, demanding that it notify the users of what it will do
with the data.
We think that lawsuit is about a side issue. What the company does
with the data is a secondary issue. The principal wrong here is that
the company gets that data at all.
Other weather apps
, including Accuweather and WeatherBug, are
tracking people's locations.
2018-12
Around 40% of gratis Android apps
report on the user's actions to Facebook
Often they send the machine's “advertising ID,” so that
Facebook can correlate the data it obtains from the same machine via
various apps. Some of them send Facebook detailed information about
the user's activities in the app; others only say that the user is
using that app, but that alone is often quite informative.
This spying occurs regardless of whether the user has a Facebook
account.
2018-10
Some Android apps
track the phones of users that have deleted them
2018-08
Some Google apps on Android
record the user's location even when users disable “location
tracking”
There are other ways to turn off the other kinds of location
tracking, but most users will be tricked by the misleading control.
2018-06
The Spanish football streaming app
tracks
the user's movements and listens through the microphone
This makes them act as spies for licensing enforcement.
We expect it implements DRM, too—that there is no way to save
a recording. But we can't be sure from the article.
If you learn to care much less about sports, you will benefit in
many ways. This is one more.
2018-04
More than
50%
of the 5,855 Android apps studied by researchers were found to snoop
and collect information about its users
. 40% of the apps were
found to insecurely snitch on its users. Furthermore, they could
detect only some methods of snooping, in these proprietary apps whose
source code they cannot look at. The other apps might be snooping
in other ways.
This is evidence that proprietary apps generally work against
their users. To protect their privacy and freedom, Android users
need to get rid of the proprietary software—both proprietary
Android by
switching to Replicant
and the proprietary apps by getting apps from the free software
only
F-Droid store
that
prominently warns
the user if an app contains anti-features
2018-04
Grindr collects information about
which users are HIV-positive, then provides the information to
companies
Grindr should not have so much information about its users.
It could be designed so that users communicate such info to each
other but not to the server's database.
2018-03
The moviepass app and dis-service
spy on users even more than users expected. It
records
where they travel before and after going to a movie
Don't be tracked—pay cash!
2018-02
Spotify app
harvests
users' data to personally identify and know people
through music,
their mood, mindset, activities, and tastes. There are over 150
billion events logged daily on the program which contains users'
data and personal information.
2017-11
Tracking software in popular Android apps
is pervasive and sometimes very clever. Some trackers can
follow a user's movements around a physical store by noticing WiFi
networks
2017-09
is forcing users to give away their phone numbers
and won't let
people continue using the app if they refuse.
2017-08
The Sarahah app
uploads all phone numbers and email addresses
in user's address
book to developer's server.
(Note that this article misuses the words
free software
referring to zero price.)
2017-07
20 dishonest Android apps recorded
phone
calls and sent them and text messages and emails to snoopers
Google did not intend to make these apps spy; on the contrary, it
worked in various ways to prevent that, and deleted these apps after
discovering what they did. So we cannot blame Google specifically
for the snooping of these apps.
On the other hand, Google redistributes nonfree Android apps, and
therefore shares in the responsibility for the injustice of their being
nonfree. It also distributes its own nonfree apps, such as Google Play,
which
are malicious
Could Google have done a better job of preventing apps from
cheating? There is no systematic way for Google, or Android users,
to inspect executable proprietary apps to see what they do.
Google could demand the source code for these apps, and study
the source code somehow to determine whether they mistreat users in
various ways. If it did a good job of this, it could more or less
prevent such snooping, except when the app developers are clever
enough to outsmart the checking.
But since Google itself develops malicious apps, we cannot trust
Google to protect us. We must demand release of source code to the
public, so we can depend on each other.
2017-05
Apps for BART
snoop on users
With free software apps, users could
make sure
that they
don't snoop.
With proprietary apps, one can only hope that they don't.
2017-05
A study found 234 Android apps that track users by
listening
to ultrasound from beacons placed in stores or played by TV
programs
2017-04
Faceapp appears to do lots of surveillance, judging by
how much access it demands to personal data in the device
2017-04
Users are suing Bose for
distributing a spyware app for its headphones
. Specifically,
the app would record the names of the audio files users listen to
along with the headphone's unique serial number.
The suit accuses that this was done without the users' consent.
If the fine print of the app said that users gave consent for this,
would that make it acceptable? No way! It should be flat out
illegal to design
the app to snoop at all
2017-04
Pairs of Android apps can collude
to transmit users' personal data to servers.
study found tens of thousands of pairs that collude
2017-03
Verizon
announced an opt-in proprietary search app that it will
pre-install
on some of its phones. The app will give Verizon the same information
about the users' searches that Google normally gets when they use
its search engine.
Currently, the app is
being pre-installed on only one phone
, and the user must
explicitly opt-in before the app takes effect. However, the app
remains spyware—an “optional” piece of spyware is
still spyware.
2017-01
The Meitu photo-editing app
sends
user data to a Chinese company
2016-11
The Uber app tracks
clients'
movements before and after the ride
This example illustrates how “getting the user's
consent” for surveillance is inadequate as a protection against
massive surveillance.
2016-11
research paper
that investigated the privacy and security of
283 Android VPN apps concluded that “in spite of the promises
for privacy, security, and anonymity given by the majority of VPN
apps—millions of users may be unawarely subject to poor security
guarantees and abusive practices inflicted by VPN apps.”
Following is a non-exhaustive list, taken from the research paper,
of some proprietary VPN apps that track users and infringe their
privacy:
SurfEasy
Includes tracking libraries such as NativeX and Appflood,
meant to track users and show them targeted ads.
sFly Network Booster
Requests the
READ_SMS
and
SEND_SMS
permissions upon installation, meaning it has full access to users'
text messages.
DroidVPN and TigerVPN
Requests the
READ_LOGS
permission to read logs
for other apps and also core system logs. TigerVPN developers have
confirmed this.
HideMyAss
Sends traffic to LinkedIn. Also, it stores detailed logs and
may turn them over to the UK government if requested.
VPN Services HotspotShield
Injects JavaScript code into the HTML pages returned to the
users. The stated purpose of the JS injection is to display ads. Uses
roughly five tracking libraries. Also, it redirects the user's
traffic through valueclick.com (an advertising website).
WiFi Protector VPN
Injects JavaScript code into HTML pages, and also uses roughly
five tracking libraries. Developers of this app have confirmed that
the non-premium version of the app does JavaScript injection for
tracking the user and displaying ads.
2016-09
Google's new voice messaging app
logs
all conversations
2016-06
Facebook's new Magic Photo app
scans your mobile phone's photo collections for known faces
and suggests you circulate the picture you take according to who is
in the frame.
This spyware feature seems to require online access to some
known-faces database, which means the pictures are likely to be
sent across the wire to Facebook's servers and face-recognition
algorithms.
If so, none of Facebook users' pictures are private anymore,
even if the user didn't “upload” them to the service.
2016-05
Facebook's app listens all the time,
to
snoop on what people are listening to or watching
. In addition,
it may be analyzing people's conversations to serve them with targeted
advertisements.
2016-04
A pregnancy test controller application not only can
spy on many sorts of data in the phone, and in server accounts,
it can alter them too
2016-01
Apps that include
Symphony surveillance software snoop on what radio and TV programs
are playing nearby
. Also on what users post on various sites
such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
2015-11
“Cryptic communication,”
unrelated to the app's functionality, was
found in the 500 most popular gratis Android apps
The article should not have described these apps as
“free”—they are not free software. The clear way
to say “zero price” is “gratis.”
The article takes for granted that the usual analytics tools are
legitimate, but is that valid? Software developers have no right to
analyze what users are doing or how. “Analytics” tools
that snoop are just as wrong as any other snooping.
2015-10
More than 73% and 47% of mobile applications, for Android and iOS
respectively
hand over
personal, behavioral and location information
of their users to
third parties.
2015-08
Like most “music screaming” disservices, Spotify is
based on proprietary malware (DRM and snooping). In August 2015 it
demanded users submit to increased snooping
, and some are starting
to realize that it is nasty.
This article shows the
twisted ways that they present snooping as a way to “serve”
users better
—never mind whether they want that. This is a
typical example of the attitude of the proprietary software industry
towards those they have subjugated.
Out, out, damned Spotify!
2015-07
Many retail businesses publish cr…apps that ask to
spy on the user's own data
—often many kinds.
Those companies know that snoop-phone usage trains people to say
yes to almost any snooping.
2015-06
A study in 2015
found that 90% of the top-ranked gratis proprietary
Android apps contained recognizable tracking libraries. For the paid
proprietary apps, it was only 60%.
The article confusingly describes gratis apps as
“free”, but most of them are not in fact
free software
. It also uses the
ugly word “monetize”. A good replacement for that word
is “exploit”; nearly always that will fit perfectly.
2015-05
Gratis Android apps (but not
free software
) connect to 100
tracking
and advertising
URLs, on the average.
2015-04
Widely used
proprietary
QR-code scanner apps snoop on the user
. This is in addition to
the snooping done by the phone company, and perhaps by the OS in
the phone.
Don't be distracted by the question of whether the app developers
get users to say “I agree”. That is no excuse for
malware.
2014-11
Many proprietary apps for mobile devices
report which other apps the user has installed.
is doing this in a way that at least is visible and optional
. Not
as bad as what the others do.
2014-01
The Simeji keyboard is a smartphone version of Baidu's
spying
IME
2013-12
The nonfree Snapchat app's principal purpose is to restrict the
use of data on the user's computer, but it does surveillance too:
it tries to get the user's list of other people's phone
numbers
2013-12
The Brightest Flashlight app
sends user data, including geolocation, for use by companies
The FTC criticized this app because it asked the user to
approve sending personal data to the app developer but did not ask
about sending it to other companies. This shows the weakness of
the reject-it-if-you-dislike-snooping “solution” to
surveillance: why should a flashlight app send any information to
anyone? A free software flashlight app would not.
2012-12
FTC says most mobile apps for children don't respect privacy:
Online Conferencing
#SpywareInSkype
2025-05
Microsoft Teams has been
collecting voice and face data
from students of an Australian school, to feed the CoPilot
chatbot. It took the school network administrators a
whole month to realize what was happening, and disable this
malfeature. It was obviously beyond their imagination that
Microsoft could have
made biometric data collection the default
in Teams!
Let's hope legislators and regulatory agencies all over the world
will quickly put a stop to this sort of outrageous practice.
In any case people would be better off switching to a free-software
replacement such as Jitsi Meet for medium-size groups, or Big Blue
Button for larger ones. Many public instances are available, and
groups of users can also set up their own servers.
2020-12
The HonorLock online exam
proctoring program is a surveillance tool that
tracks
students and collects data
such as face, driving license, and
network information, among others, in blatant violation of students'
privacy.
Preventing students from cheating should not be an excuse for
running malware/spyware on their computers, and it's good that students
are protesting. But their petitions overlook a crucial issue, namely,
the injustice of being forced to run nonfree software in order to
get an education.
2020-04
Proprietary programs Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx
are
collecting user's personal and identifiable data
including how long
a call lasts, who's participating in the call, and the IP addresses
of everyone taking part. From experience, this can even harm users
physically if those companies hand over data to governments.
2019-08
Skype refuses to say whether it can
eavesdrop
on calls
That almost certainly means it can do so.
2013-07
Skype contains
spyware
Microsoft changed Skype
specifically for spying
Games
#SpywareInGames
2025-05
Nintendo has been known to
remotely brick
the Wii
until users consented to new, more restrictive legal
terms. This company is now pushing tyranny even further: in the
2025 update of its User Account Agreement, it warns that
Switch consoles may be
permanently
bricked if they are
not used as authorized
In addition, Nintendo can record audio and video chats for
moderation purposes. User's consent is required, but there is no
guarantee that the recordings will not be sent to third parties.
In short, there is no privacy in these chats.
If you ever consider buying a Switch, think twice, because you
will not own it. Nintendo will.
2020-10
Microsoft is imposing its
surveillance on the game of Minecraft by
requiring
every player to open an account on Microsoft's network
. Microsoft
has bought the game and will merge all accounts into its network,
which will give them access to people's data.
Minecraft players
can play Minetest
instead. The essential advantage of Minetest is that it is free
software, meaning it respects the user's computer freedom. As a bonus,
it offers more options.
2019-08
Microsoft recorded users of Xboxes and had
human workers listen to the recordings
Morally, we see no difference between having human workers listen and
having speech-recognition systems listen. Both intrude on privacy.
2018-06
Red Shell is a spyware that
is found in many proprietary games. It
tracks data on users' computers and sends it to third parties
2018-04
ArenaNet surreptitiously installed a spyware
program along with an update to the massive
multiplayer game Guild Wars 2. The spyware allowed ArenaNet
to snoop on all open processes running on its user's computer
2017-11
The driver for a certain gaming keyboard
sends
information to China
2015-12
Many
video game consoles snoop on their users and report to the
internet
—even what their users weigh.
A game console is a computer, and you can't trust a computer with
a nonfree operating system.
2015-09
Modern gratis game cr…apps
collect a wide range of data about their users and their users'
friends and associates
Even nastier, they do it through ad networks that merge the data
collected by various cr…apps and sites made by different
companies.
They use this data to manipulate people to buy things, and hunt for
“whales” who can be led to spend a lot of money. They also
use a back door to manipulate the game play for specific players.
While the article describes gratis games, games that cost money
can use the same tactics.
2014-01
Angry Birds
spies for companies, and the NSA takes advantage
to spy through it too
. Here's information on
more spyware apps
More about NSA app spying
2005-10
Blizzard Warden is a hidden
“cheating-prevention” program that
spies on every process running on a gamer's computer and sniffs a
good deal of personal data
, including lots of activities which
have nothing to do with cheating.
Spyware in Connected Equipment
#SpywareInEquipment
2021-01
Most Internet connected devices in Mozilla's
“Privacy
Not Included”
list
are
designed to snoop on users
even if they meet
Mozilla's “Minimum Security Standards.” Insecure
design of the program running on some of these devices
makes
the user susceptible to be snooped on and exploited by crackers as
well
2019-12
As tech companies add microphones to a wide range
of products, including refrigerators and motor vehicles,
they also set up transcription farms where human employees
listen to what people say
and tweak the recognition algorithms.
2017-08
The bad security in many Internet of Stings devices allows
ISPs
to snoop on the people that use them
Don't be a sucker—reject all the stings.
(It is unfortunate that the article uses the term
“monetize”
.)
TV Sets
#SpywareInTVSets
Emo Phillips made a joke: The other day a woman came up to me and
said, “Didn't I see you on television?” I said, “I
don't know. You can't see out the other way.” Evidently that was
before Amazon “smart” TVs.
2022-04
Today's “smart” TVs
push people to surrender to tracking via internet
. Some won't work
unless they have a chance to download nonfree software. And they are
designed for programmed obsolescence.
2022-01
“Smart” TV manufacturers
spy on people using various methods
, and harvest their
data. They are collecting audio, video, and TV usage data to profile
people.
2020-10
TV manufacturers are turning to produce only
“Smart” TV sets (which include spyware) that
it's now very
hard to find a TV that doesn't spy on you
It appears that those manufacturers business model is not to produce
TV and sell them for money, but to collect your personal data and
(possibly) hand over them to others for benefit.
2020-06
TV manufacturers are able to
snoop
every second of what the user is watching
. This is illegal due to
the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, but they're circumventing
it through EULAs.
2019-01
Vizio TVs
collect “whatever the TV sees,”
in the own words of the company's
CTO, and this data is sold to third parties. This is in return for
“better service” (meaning more intrusive ads?) and slightly
lower retail prices.
What is supposed to make this spying acceptable, according to him,
is that it is opt-in in newer models. But since the Vizio software is
nonfree, we don't know what is actually happening behind the scenes,
and there is no guarantee that all future updates will leave the
settings unchanged.
If you already own a Vizio “smart” TV (or any “smart” TV, for that
matter), the easiest way to make sure it isn't spying on you is
to disconnect it from the Internet, and use a terrestrial antenna
instead. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. Another option,
if you are technically oriented, is to get your own router (which can
be an old computer running completely free software), and set up a
firewall to block connections to Vizio's servers. Or, as a last resort,
you can replace your TV with another model.
2018-04
Some “Smart” TVs automatically
load downgrades that install a surveillance app
We link to the article for the facts it presents. It
is too bad that the article finishes by advocating the
moral weakness of surrendering to Netflix. The Netflix app
is
malware too
2017-02
Vizio “smart”
TVs
report everything that is viewed on them, and not just broadcasts and
cable
. Even if the image is coming from the user's own computer,
the TV reports what it is. The existence of a way to disable the
surveillance, even if it were not hidden as it was in these TVs,
does not legitimize the surveillance.
2015-11
Some web and TV advertisements play inaudible
sounds to be picked up by proprietary malware running
on other devices in range so as to determine that they
are nearby. Once your Internet devices are paired with
your TV, advertisers can correlate ads with Web activity, and other
cross-device tracking
2015-11
Vizio goes a step further than other TV
manufacturers in spying on their users: their
“smart” TVs analyze your viewing habits in detail and
link them your IP address
so that advertisers can track you
across devices.
It is possible to turn this off, but having it enabled by default
is an injustice already.
2015-11
Tivo's alliance with Viacom adds 2.3 million households
to the 600 millions social media profiles the company
already monitors. Tivo customers are unaware they're
being watched by advertisers. By combining TV viewing
information with online social media participation, Tivo can now
correlate TV advertisement with online purchases
, exposing all
users to new combined surveillance by default.
2015-07
Vizio “smart” TVs recognize and
track
what people are watching
, even if it isn't a TV channel.
2015-05
Verizon cable TV
snoops on what programs people watch, and even what they wanted to
record
2015-04
Vizio
used a firmware “upgrade” to make its TVs snoop on what
users watch
. The TVs did not do that when first sold.
2015-02
The Samsung “Smart” TV
transmits users' voice on the internet to another company, Nuance
Nuance can save it and would then have to give it to the US or some
other government.
Speech recognition is not to be trusted unless it is done by free
software in your own computer.
In its privacy policy, Samsung explicitly confirms that
voice
data containing sensitive information will be transmitted to third
parties
2014-11
The Amazon “Smart” TV is
snooping all the time
2014-09
More or less all “smart” TVs
spy
on their users
The report was as of 2014, but we don't expect this has got
better.
This shows that laws requiring products to get users' formal
consent before collecting personal data are totally inadequate.
And what happens if a user declines consent? Probably the TV will
say, “Without your consent to tracking, the TV will not
work.”
Proper laws would say that TVs are not allowed to report what the
user watches—no exceptions!
2014-05
LG
disabled network features
on
previously purchased
“smart” TVs, unless the purchasers agreed to let LG begin
to snoop on them and distribute their personal data.
2014-05
Spyware in LG “smart” TVs
reports what the user watches, and the switch to turn this off has
no effect
. (The fact that the transmission reports a 404 error
really means nothing; the server could save that data anyway.)
Even worse, it
snoops on other devices on the user's local network
LG later said it had installed a patch to stop this, but any
product could spy this way.
Meanwhile, LG TVs
do lots of spying anyway
2013-11
Spyware in LG “smart” TVs
reports what the user watches, and the switch to turn this off has
no effect
. (The fact that the transmission reports a 404 error
really means nothing; the server could save that data anyway.)
Even worse, it
snoops on other devices on the user's local network
LG later said it had installed a patch to stop this, but any
product could spy this way.
2012-12
Crackers found a way to break security on a “smart” TV
and use its camera to watch the people who are watching TV.
Cameras
#SpywareInCameras
2025-01
Canon is
preventing customers from using one of its cameras as a webcam
unless they create an account on the company's server, and pay an
additional subscription. This unjust practice could be eliminated if
the camera firmware were free (as in freedom).
2023-12
Surveillance cameras put in by government
A to surveil for it may be surveilling for
government B as well. That's because A put in a product
made by B with nonfree software
(Please note that this article misuses the word “
hack
” to
mean “break security.”)
2023-07
Driverless cars in San Francisco collect videos constantly
, using
cameras inside and outside, and governments have already collected
those videos secretly.
As the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project says, they are
“driving us straight into authoritarianism.” We must
regulate
all
cameras that collect images that can be used to track people
to make sure they are not used for that.
2019-02
The Ring doorbell camera is designed so that the
manufacturer (now Amazon) can watch all the time. Now it turns out
that
anyone else can also watch, and fake videos too
The third party vulnerability is presumably
unintentional and Amazon will probably fix it. However, we
do not expect Amazon to change the design that
allows
Amazon to watch
2019-01
Amazon Ring “security” devices
send the video they capture to Amazon servers
, which save it
long-term.
In many cases, the video shows everyone that comes near, or merely
passes by, the user's front door.
The article focuses on how Ring used to let individual employees look
at the videos freely. It appears Amazon has tried to prevent that
secondary abuse, but the primary abuse—that Amazon gets the
video—Amazon expects society to surrender to.
2018-10
Nearly all “home security cameras”
give the manufacturer an unencrypted copy of everything they
see
. “Home insecurity camera” would be a better
name!
When Consumer Reports tested them, it suggested that these
manufacturers promise not to look at what's in the videos. That's not
security for your home. Security means making sure they don't get to
see through your camera.
2017-10
Every “home security” camera, if its
manufacturer can communicate with it, is a surveillance device.
Canary camera is an example
The article describes wrongdoing by the manufacturer, based on
the fact that the device is tethered to a server.
More about
proprietary tethering
But it also demonstrates that the device gives the company
surveillance capability.
2016-03
Over 70 brands of network-connected surveillance cameras have
security bugs that allow anyone to watch through them
2015-11
The Nest Cam “smart” camera is
always watching
even when the “owner” switches it “off.”
A “smart” device means the manufacturer is using it
to outsmart you.
Toys
#SpywareInToys
2017-11
The Furby Connect has a
universal back door
. If the product as shipped doesn't act as a
listening device, remote changes to the code could surely convert it
into one.
2017-11
A remote-control sex toy was found to make
audio
recordings of the conversation between two users
2017-03
A computerized vibrator
was snooping on its users through the proprietary control app
The app was reporting the temperature of the vibrator minute by
minute (thus, indirectly, whether it was surrounded by a person's
body), as well as the vibration frequency.
Note the totally inadequate proposed response: a labeling
standard with which manufacturers would make statements about their
products, rather than free software which users could have checked
and changed.
The company that made the vibrator
was sued for collecting lots of personal information about how people
used it
The company's statement that it was anonymizing the data may be
true, but it doesn't really matter. If it had sold the data to a data
broker, the data broker would have been able to figure out who the
user was.
Following this lawsuit,
the company has been ordered to pay a total of C$4m
to its
customers.
2017-02
“CloudPets” toys with microphones
leak childrens' conversations to the manufacturer
. Guess what?
Crackers found a way to access the data
collected by the
manufacturer's snooping.
That the manufacturer and the FBI could listen to these
conversations was unacceptable by itself.
2016-12
The “smart” toys My Friend Cayla and i-Que can be
remotely
controlled with a mobile phone
; physical access is not
necessary. This would enable crackers to listen in on a child's
conversations, and even speak into the toys themselves.
This means a burglar could speak into the toys and ask the child
to unlock the front door while Mommy's not looking.
2016-12
The “smart” toys My Friend Cayla and i-Que transmit
children's
conversations to Nuance Communications
, a speech recognition
company based in the U.S.
Those toys also contain major security vulnerabilities; crackers
can remotely control the toys with a mobile phone. This would enable
crackers to listen in on a child's speech, and even speak into the
toys themselves.
2015-02
Barbie
is
going to spy on children and adults
Drones
#SpywareInDrones
2017-08
While you're using a DJI drone
to snoop on other people, DJI is in many cases
snooping
on you
Other Appliances
#SpywareAtHome
2025-03
Amazon arbitrarily decided to
make all Echo devices send all the audio they hear to Amazon
servers
, even if the “owner” of the device specified
local processing.
The server will figure out what (if anything) someone asked it
to do.
What else will it do with that recording? There are no limits
except management's will. It might save some of the utterances it
hears, and present them years later to the political police.
2024-07
The company making a “smart” bassinet called Snoo has
locked the most advanced functionalities of the Snoo behind a
paywall
. This unexpected change mainly affects users who received
the appliance as a gift, or bought it second-hand on the assumption
that all these functionalities would be available to them, as they
used to be. This is another example of the deceptive behavior of
proprietary software developers who take advantage of their power
over users to change rules at will.
Another malicious feature of the Snoo is the fact that users
need to create an account with the company, which thus has access
to personal data, location (SSID), appliance log, etc., as well as
manual notes about baby history.
2023-09
Philips Hue, the most ubiquitous
home automation product in the US, is planning to soon
force users to log in to the app server
in order to be able to
adjust a lightbulb, or use other functionalities, in what amounts to
a massive user-tracking data grab.
2020-09
Many employers are using nonfree
software, including videoconference software, to
surveil and monitor staff working at home
. If the program reports
whether you are “active,” that is in effect a malicious
surveillance feature.
2020-08
Google Nest
is taking over ADT
. Google sent out a software
update to its speaker devices using their back door
that
listens for things like smoke alarms
and then notifies your phone
that an alarm is happening. This means the devices now listen for more
than just their wake words. Google says the software update was sent
out prematurely and on accident and Google was planning on disclosing
this new feature and offering it to customers who pay for it.
2020-06
“Bossware” is malware that bosses
coerce workers into installing in their own computers
, so the
bosses can spy on them.
This shows why requiring the user's “consent” is not
an adequate basis for protecting digital privacy. The boss can coerce
most workers into consenting to almost anything, even probable exposure
to contagious disease that can be fatal. Software like this should
be illegal and bosses that demand it should be prosecuted for it.
2019-07
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.
2019-05
Amazon Alexa collects a lot more information from users
than is necessary for correct functioning (time, location,
recordings made without a legitimate prompt), and sends
it to Amazon's servers, which store it indefinitely. Even
worse, Amazon forwards it to third-party companies. Thus,
even if users request deletion of their data from Amazon's servers,
the data remain on other servers
, where they can be accessed by
advertising companies and government agencies. In other words,
deleting the collected information doesn't cancel the wrong of
collecting it.
Data collected by devices such as the Nest thermostat, the Philips
Hue-connected lights, the Chamberlain MyQ garage opener and the Sonos
speakers are likewise stored longer than necessary on the servers
the devices are tethered to. Moreover, they are made available to
Alexa. As a result, Amazon has a very precise picture of users' life
at home, not only in the present, but in the past (and, who knows,
in the future too?)
2019-04
Some of users' commands to the Alexa service are
recorded for Amazon employees to listen to
. The Google and Apple
voice assistants do similar things.
A fraction of the Alexa service staff even has access to
location and other personal data
Since the client program is nonfree, and data processing is done
in
the cloud
” (a soothing way of saying “We won't
tell you how and where it's done”), users have no way
to know what happens to the recordings unless human eavesdroppers
break their non-disclosure agreements
2019-02
The HP
“ink subscription” cartridges have DRM that constantly
communicates with HP servers
to make sure the user is still
paying for the subscription, and hasn't printed more pages than were
paid for.
Even though the ink subscription program may be cheaper in some
specific cases, it spies on users, and involves totally unacceptable
restrictions in the use of ink cartridges that would otherwise be in
working order.
2018-08
Crackers found a way to break the security of an Amazon device,
and
turn it into a listening device
for them.
It was very difficult for them to do this. The job would be much
easier for Amazon. And if some government such as China or the US
told Amazon to do this, or cease to sell the device in that country,
do you think Amazon would have the moral fiber to say no?
(These crackers are probably hackers too, but please
don't use
“hacking” to mean “breaking security”
.)
2018-04
A medical insurance company
offers a gratis electronic toothbrush that snoops on its user by
sending usage data back over the Internet
2017-08
Sonos
told all its customers, “Agree”
to snooping or the product will stop working
Another article
says they won't forcibly change the software, but
people won't be able to get any upgrades and eventually it will
stop working.
2017-06
Lots of “smart” products are designed
to
listen to everyone in the house, all the time
Today's technological practice does not include any way of making
a device that can obey your voice commands without potentially spying
on you. Even if it is air-gapped, it could be saving up records
about you for later examination.
2014-07
Nest thermometers send
a lot of
data about the user
2013-10
Rent-to-own computers were programmed to spy on their renters
Wearables
#SpywareOnWearables
2018-07
Tommy Hilfiger clothing
will
monitor how often people wear it
This will teach the sheeple to find it normal that companies
monitor every aspect of what they do.
“Smart” Watches
2020-09
Internet-enabled watches with proprietary software
are malware, violating people (specially children's)
privacy. In addition, they have a lot of security flaws. They
permit security breakers (and unauthorized people) to access
the watch.
Thus, ill-intentioned unauthorized people can intercept communications between parent and child and spoof messages to and from the watch, possibly endangering the child.
(Note that this article misuses the word “
hackers
to mean “crackers.”)
2016-03
A very cheap “smart watch” comes with an Android app
that connects to an unidentified site in China
The article says this is a back door, but that could be a
misunderstanding. However, it is certainly surveillance, at least.
2014-07
An LG “smart” watch is designed
to report its location to someone else and to transmit conversations
too
Vehicles
#SpywareInVehicles
2024-09
Kia cars were built with a back door that enabled the company's
server to locate them and take control of them. The car owner had
access to these controls through the Kia server. That the
car owner had such control
is not objectionable. However, that Kia itself had such control
is Orwellian, and ought to be illegal. The icing on the Orwellian
cake is that the server had a security fault which
allowed absolutely anyone to
activate those controls
for any Kia car.
Many people will be outraged at that security bug, but this was
presumably an accident. The fact that Kia had such control over cars
after selling them to customers is what outrages us, and that must
have been intentional on Kia's part.
2024-03
GM is spying on drivers
who own or rent their cars, and give
away detailed driving data to insurance companies through data
brokers. These companies then analyze the data, and hike up insurance
prices if they think the data denotes “risky driving.”
For the car to make this data available to anyone but the owner or
renter of the car should be a crime. If the car is owned by a rental
company, that company should not have access to it either.
2023-11
Recent autos offer a feature by which the drivers
can connect their snoop-phones to the car. That feature
snoops on the calls and texts
and gives the data to the car
manufacturer, and to the state.
A good privacy law would prohibit cars recording this data about
the users' activities. But not just
this
data—lots of
other data too.
2023-09
In an article from Mozilla, every car brand they researched
has failed their privacy tests
. Some car manufacturers explicitly
mention that they collect data which includes “sexual
activities” and “genetic information”. Not only
collecting any of such data is a huge privacy violation in the first
place, some companies assume drivers and passengers' consent before
they get in the car. Notably, Tesla threatens that the car may be
“inoperable” if the user opts out of data collection.
2023-04
Tesla cars record videos of activity inside the car, and
company staff can watch those recordings and copy them
. Or at
least they were able to do so until last year.
Tesla may have changed some security functions so that this
is harder to do. But if Tesla can get those recordings, that is
because it is planning for some people to use them in some situation,
and that is unjust already. It should be illegal to make a car
that takes photos or videos of the people in the car—or of
people outside the car.
2023-04
GM is switching to a new
audio/video system in its cars in order to
collect complete information about what people in the car watch or
listen to, and also how they drive
The new system for navigation and “driving assistance”
will be tethered to various online dis-services, and GM will snoop on
everything the users do with them. But don't feel bad about that,
because some of these subscriptions will be gratis for the first
8 years.
2023-02
Volkswagen
tracks the location of every driver, and sells that data to
third-parties
. However, it refuses to use the data to implement a
feature for the benefit of its customers unless they pay extra money
for it.
This came to attention and brought controversy when Volkswagen
refused to locate a car-jacked vehicle with a toddler in it because
the owner of the car had not subscribed to the relevant service.
2021-05
Ford
is planning to force ads on drivers in cars
, with the ability for
the owner to pay extra to turn them off. The system probably imposes
surveillance on drivers too.
2020-08
New Toyotas will
upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums
based on driver behaviour.
Before you buy a “connected” car, make sure you can
disconnect its cellular antenna and its GPS antenna. If you want
GPS navigation, get a separate navigator which runs free software
and works with Open Street Map.
2019-12
Most modern cars now
record and send various kinds of data to the manufacturer
. For
the user, access to the data is nearly impossible, as it involves
cracking the car's computer, which is always hidden and running with
proprietary software.
2019-03
Tesla cars collect lots of personal data, and
when they go to a junkyard the driver's personal data goes with
them
2019-02
The FordPass Connect feature of some Ford vehicles has
near-complete access to the internal car network
. It is constantly
connected to the cellular phone network and sends Ford a lot of data,
including car location. This feature operates even when the ignition
key is removed, and users report that they can't disable it.
If you own one of these cars, have you succeeded in breaking the
connectivity by disconnecting the cellular modem, or wrapping the
antenna in aluminum foil?
2018-11
In China, it is mandatory for electric
cars to be equipped with a terminal that
transfers technical data, including car location,
to a government-run platform
. In practice,
manufacturers collect this data
as part of their own spying, then
forward it to the government-run platform.
2018-10
GM
tracked the choices of radio programs
in its
“connected” cars, minute by minute.
GM did not get users' consent, but it could have got that easily by
sneaking it into the contract that users sign for some digital service
or other. A requirement for consent is effectively no protection.
The cars can also collect lots of other data: listening to you,
watching you, following your movements, tracking passengers' cell
phones.
All
such data collection should be forbidden.
But if you really want to be safe, we must make sure the car's
hardware cannot collect any of that data, or that the software
is free so we know it won't collect any of that data.
2017-11
AI-powered driving apps can
track your every move
2016-07
Computerized cars with nonfree software are
snooping devices
2016-02
The Nissan Leaf has a built-in
cell phone modem which allows effectively anyone to
access its computers remotely and make changes in various
settings
That's easy to do because the system has no authentication
when accessed through the modem. However, even if it asked
for authentication, you couldn't be confident that Nissan
has no access. The software in the car is proprietary,
which means
it demands blind faith from its users
Even if no one connects to the car remotely, the cell phone modem
enables the phone company to track the car's movements all the time;
it is possible to physically remove the cell phone modem, though.
2013-06
Tesla cars allow the company to extract
data remotely and determine the car's location
at any time. (See Section 2, paragraphs b and c of the
privacy statement
.) The company says it doesn't store this
information, but if the state orders it to get the data and hand it
over, the state can store it.
2013-03
Proprietary software in cars
records information about drivers' movements
, which is made
available to car manufacturers, insurance companies, and others.
The case of toll-collection systems, mentioned in this article,
is not really a matter of proprietary surveillance. These systems
are an intolerable invasion of privacy, and should be replaced with
anonymous payment systems, but the invasion isn't done by malware. The
other cases mentioned are done by proprietary malware in the car.
Virtual Reality
#SpywareInVR
2020-08
Oculus headsets
require
users to identify themselves to Facebook
. This will give Facebook
free rein to pervasively snoop on Oculus users.
2016-12
VR equipment, measuring every slight motion,
creates the potential for the most intimate
surveillance ever. All it takes to make this potential real
is
software as malicious as many other programs listed in this
page
You can bet Facebook will implement the maximum possible
surveillance on Oculus Rift devices. The moral is, never trust a VR
system with nonfree software in it.
Spyware on the Web
#SpywareOnTheWeb
In addition, many web sites spy on their visitors. Web sites are not
programs, so it
makes no sense to call them “free” or “proprietary”
but the surveillance is an abuse all the same.
2025-06
Researchers discovered that the Meta Pixel and Yandex
Metrica trackers, which are embedded in many websites, have been
spying on behalf of the native Meta and Yandex Android apps
respectively, by taking advantage of security flaws in the Android
API. When the user of an Android device accessed these pages
with a browser such as Chrome, the trackers made all browsing
data available to the native apps running in the background. The
data could then be correlated to the user account or the Android
Advertising ID
, i.e. de-anonymized.
Although Meta and Yandex have discontinued this type of spying, they
may resume it in the future, possibly with other methods, and we don't
know which other companies might follow their example. A foolproof
way to avoid this sort of tracking is to refrain from installing
any proprietary apps on a “smart”phone, especially if
the app has a way of identifying users. To avoid proprietary apps,
we recommend using the
F-Droid
store instead of Google Play.
Since most trackers, including the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica,
are nonfree JavaScript programs, it is also good practice to prevent
nonfree JavaScript from running in the browser, with an add-on such
as GNU LibreJS.
2022-02
Honorlock set a network of fake test answer
honeypot sites, tempting people to get exam answers, but
that
is a way to entrap students, so as to identify them and punish
them
, using nonfree JS code to identify them.
2020-09
The Markup investigated 80,000 popular web sites and
reports on how much they snoop on users
. Almost 70,000 had
third-party trackers. 5,000 fingerprinted the browser to identify
users. 12,000 recorded the user's mouse clicks and movements.
2019-01
Until 2015, any tweet that listed a geographical tag
sent the precise GPS location to Twitter's server
. It still
contains these GPS locations.
2017-01
When a page uses Disqus
for comments, the proprietary Disqus software
loads
a Facebook software package into the browser of every anonymous visitor
to the page, and makes the page's URL available to Facebook
2016-12
Online sales, with tracking and surveillance of customers,
enables
businesses to show different people different prices
. Most of
the tracking is done by recording interactions with servers, but
proprietary software contributes.
2012-10
Many web sites rat their visitors to advertising
networks that track users. Of the top 1000 web sites,
84%
(as of 5/17/2012) fed their visitors third-party cookies, allowing
other sites to track them
2012-08
Many web sites report all their visitors
to Google by using the Google Analytics service, which
tells Google the IP address and the page that was visited
[2012]
Many web sites try to collect users' address books (the user's list
of other people's phone numbers or email addresses). This violates
the privacy of those other people.
2011-10
Pages that contain “Like” buttons
enable Facebook to track visitors to those pages
—even users
that don't have Facebook accounts.
JavaScript
#SpywareInJavaScript
2022-04
The US government
sent
personal data to Facebook
for every college student that applied
for US government student aid. It justified this as being for a
“campaign.”
The data included name, phone number and email address. This shows
the agency didn't even make a handwaving attempt to anonymize the
student. Not that anonymization usually does much good—but
the failure to even try shows that the agency was completely blind
to the issue of respecting students' privacy.
2018-11
Many web sites use JavaScript code
to snoop on information that users have typed into a
form but not sent
, in order to learn their identity. Some are
getting sued
for this.
The chat facilities of some customer services use the same sort of
malware to
read what the user is typing before it is posted
2018-07
British Airways used
nonfree
JavaScript on its web site to give other companies personal data on
its customers
2017-12
Some JavaScript malware
swipes usernames from browser-based password managers
2017-11
Some websites send
JavaScript code to collect all the user's input,
which
can then be used to reproduce the whole session
If you use LibreJS, it will block that malicious JavaScript
code.
Flash
#SpywareInFlash
2013-10
Flash and JavaScript are used for
“fingerprinting” devices
to identify users.
2010-03
Flash Player's
cookie feature helps web sites track visitors
Chrome
#SpywareInChrome
2021-09
Google's proprietary Chrome web browser
added a surveillance API (idle detection API)
which lets
websites ask Chrome to report when a user with a web page open is
idle.
2019-06
Google Chrome is an
instrument of surveillance
. It lets thousands of trackers invade
users' computers and report the sites they visit to advertising and
data companies, first of all to Google. Moreover, if users have a
Gmail account, Chrome automatically logs them in to the browser for
more convenient profiling. On Android, Chrome also reports their
location to Google.
The best way to escape surveillance is to switch to
IceCat
, a modified version of Firefox
with several changes to protect users' privacy.
2017-04
Low-priced Chromebooks for schools are
collecting far more data on students than is necessary, and store
it indefinitely
. Parents and students complain about the lack
of transparency on the part of both the educational services and the
schools, the difficulty of opting out of these services, and the lack
of proper privacy policies, among other things.
But complaining is not sufficient. Parents, students and teachers
should realize that the software Google uses to spy on students is
nonfree, so they can't verify what it really does. The only remedy is
to persuade school officials to
exclusively use free software
for both education and school
administration. If the school is run locally, parents and teachers
can mandate their representatives at the School Board to refuse the
budget unless the school initiates a switch to free software. If
education is run nation-wide, they need to persuade legislators
(e.g., through free software organizations, political parties,
etc.) to migrate the public schools to free software.
2015-07
Google Chrome makes it easy for an extension to do
total
snooping on the user's browsing
, and many of them do so.
2015-06
Google Chrome includes a module that
activates microphones and transmits audio to its servers
2013-08
Google Chrome
spies on browser history, affiliations
, and other installed
software.
2008-09
Google Chrome contains a key logger that
sends Google every URL typed in
, one key at a time.
Spyware in Networks
#SpywareInNetworks
2021-10
EdTech companies use their surveillance power to
manipulate students, and direct them into tracks towards various
levels of knowledge, power and prestige. The article argues that
these
companies should obtain licenses to operate
. That wouldn't hurt,
but it doesn't address the root of the problem. All data acquired
in a school about any student, teacher, or employee must not leave
the school, and must be kept in computers that belong to the school
and run free (as in freedom) software. That way, the school district
and/or parents can control what is done with those data.
2021-05
The United States' government is reportedly considering
teaming
up with private companies to monitor American citizens' private online
activity and digital communications
What creates the opportunity to try this is the fact that these
companies are already snooping on users' private activities. That
in turn is due to people's use of nonfree software which snoops,
and online dis-services which snoop.
2021-02
Google
handed
over personal data of Indian protesters and activists to Indian
police
which led to their arrest. The cops requested the IP
address and the location where a document was created and with that
information, they identified protesters and activists.
2020-09
While the world is still
struggling with COVID-19 coronavirus, many
people
are in danger of surveillance
and their computers are infected
with malware as a result of installing proprietary software.
2019-05
Microsoft
forces
people to give their phone number
in order to be able to create an account on
the company's network. On top of mistreating their users by providing
nonfree software, Microsoft is tracking their lives outside the computer and
violates their privacy.
2019-02
Google invites people to
let Google monitor their phone use, and all internet use in their
homes, for an extravagant payment of $20
This is not a malicious functionality of a program with some other
purpose; this is the software's sole purpose, and Google says so. But
Google says it in a way that encourages most people to ignore the
details. That, we believe, makes it fitting to list here.
2018-08
Google
will track people even if people turn off location history
, using
Google Maps, weather updates, and browser searches. Google basically
uses any app activity to track people.
2018-08
Since the beginning of 2017,
Android
phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular
towers
, even when location services are disabled, and sending
that data back to Google.
2016-06
Investigation Shows
GCHQ
Using US Companies, NSA To Route Around Domestic Surveillance
Restrictions
Specifically, it can collect the emails of members of Parliament
this way, because they pass it through Microsoft.
2012-12
The Cisco TNP IP phones are
spying devices
Proprietary malware
All items added since 2018
By type
Addictions
Back doors
Censorship
Coercion
Coverups
Deception
DRM
Fraud
Incompatibility
Insecurity
Interference
Jails
Manipulation
Obsolescence
Sabotage
Subscriptions
Surveillance
Tethers
Tyrants
In the pipe
By product
Appliances
Cars
Conferencing
EdTech
Games
Mobiles
Webpages
By company
Adobe
Amazon
Apple
Google
HP
Microsoft
Articles
UHD Blu-ray Denies Your Freedom
Set language
Available for this page:
[en]
[es]
[fr]
[it]
italiano
[ja]
[pt-br]
português
[ru]
русский
“The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide
mission to promote computer user freedom. We defend the rights of all
software users.”
JOIN
DONATE
SHOP
Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to

There are also
other ways to contact
the FSF. Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
to

Please see the
Translations
README
for information on coordinating and contributing translations
of this article.
Copyright © 2015-2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This page is licensed under a
Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Copyright Infringement Notification
Updated:
$Date: 2026/04/18 15:32:18 $