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Malware in Proprietary Software - June 2025 Additions

Item posted by Rob Musial <robmusial> on Thu 03 Jul 2025 03:13:03 AM UTC.

The initial injustice of proprietary software often leads to further injustices: malicious functionalities.

The introduction of unjust techniques in nonfree software, such as back doors, DRM, tethering, and others, has become ever more frequent. Nowadays, it is standard practice.

We at the GNU Project show examples of malware that has been introduced in a wide variety of products and dis-services people use everyday, and of companies that make use of these techniques.

Here are our latest additions

June 2025

Amazon's Software Is Malware


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.

Proprietary Surveillance


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.

Malware in Games

Of course, gamers hate Denuvo. But hate is useless. They should go one step further, and stop buying games that use DRM.

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