Proprietary software, also called nonfree software, means software that doesn't respect users' freedom and community. A proprietary program puts its developer or owner in a position of power over its users. This power is in itself an injustice.
The point of this page is that the initial injustice of proprietary software often leads to further injustices: malicious functionalities.
In this section, we also list one other malicious characteristic of mobile phones, location tracking which is caused by the underlying radio system rather than by the specific software in them.
Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate.
Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to be had.
As of December, 2021, the pages in this directory list around 550 instances of malicious functionalities (with more than 630 references to back them up), but there are surely thousands more we don't know about.
If you want to be notified when we add new items or make other changes, subscribe to the mailing list <www-malware-commits@gnu.org>.
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Users of proprietary software are defenseless against these forms of mistreatment. The way to avoid them is by insisting on free (freedom-respecting) software. Since free software is controlled by its users, they have a pretty good defense against malicious software functionality.
NordicTrack, a company that sells exercise machines with ability to show videos limits what people can watch, and recently disabled a feature that was originally functional. This happened through automatic update and probably involved a universal back door.
Hundreds of Tesla drivers were locked out of their cars as a result of Tesla's app suffering from an outage, which happened because the app is tethered to company's servers.
Some researchers at Google found a zero-day vulnerability on MacOS, which crackers used to target people visiting the websites of a media outlet and a pro-democracy labor and political group in Hong Kong.
Please note that the article wrongly refers to crackers as “hackers”.
Ed Tech 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.
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.