Malware in Proprietary Software - Latest Additions
Item posted by Rob Musial <robmusial> on Thu 02 Apr 2026 04:25:53 PM 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
March 2026
Proprietary Interference
- Shake Shack requires users of its mobile app to sign away their right to sue the company if they order their meals from their phones.
Potential Malware
- Meta has been granted a patent to use so-called “Artificial Intelligence” to impersonate human users in social media platforms, for example people who are inactive or dead. To cover itself from predictable controversies, Meta declared that it does not intend to use the technology in the context of those examples. How long before the “invention” is used to impersonate active, living people?
February 2026
HP's Software is Malware
- Microsoft is pushing Pretend Intelligence onto users of Windows, set up to be able to take real world actions on the user's behalf. This starts with a subset of enthusiasts but the company is probably planning to push it onto everyone.
Since Windows 11, like several previous versions, has a universal back door enabling Microsoft to remotely change the system code, any limits the user specifies for what Microsoft can do to per (the user) are no more than requests. If you don't want to be messed with, you should not run Windows. Nonetheless, Microsoft might heed those requests.
Warning: this article seems to ridicule the idea that users might use a feature to limit what the PI has access to on their own machines.
- 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.
Malware in Mobile Devices
- OnePlus 13 and 15 smartphones shipping with ColorOS versions 16.0.3.500/.501/.503 implement an anti-rollback feature which physically renders the device unusable if the owner tries to modify the operating system running in it.
At the time of writing the restriction affects only those two models and only ColorOS, but it is expected that the company may extend it to older models of the phone as well as to OxygenOS, the variant of the operating system installed on phones intended for the global market.
January 2026
Google's Software is Malware
December 2025
Malware In Cars
November 2025
Proprietary Back Doors
Proprietary Censorship
- Bowing down to the US government, Apple and Google removed from their stores several applications used for reporting ICE raids. Google even tried to justify it by calling ICE thugs a “vulnerable group,” despite them being the ones who carry the weapons.
Proprietary Surveillance
- 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.
