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 .

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 .

If you know of an example that ought to be in this page but isn't here, please write to <webmasters@gnu.org> to inform us. Please include the URL of a trustworthy reference or two to serve as specific substantiation.

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 home, in transportation systems, and in the classroom.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

The unique “advertising ID” for each user enables other companies to track the browsing of each specific user.

We can suppose Microsoft look at users' files for the US government on demand, though the “privacy policy” does not explicit say so. Will it look at users' files for the Chinese government on demand?

Thus, Windows is overt malware in regard to surveillance, as in other issues.

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 .

We can suppose Microsoft look 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?

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.

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.

To use proprietary software is to invite such treatment.

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 .

It appears Windows 10 sends data to Microsoft about what applications are running .

Windows 10 comes with 13 screens of snooping options , all enabled by default, and turning them off would be daunting to most users.

By default, Windows 10 sends debugging information to Microsoft, including core dumps . Microsoft now distributes them to another company.

DRM-restricted files can be used to identify people browsing through Tor . The vulnerability exists only if you use Windows.

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” .

Windows 10 telemetry program sends information to Microsoft about the user's computer and their use of the computer.

Microsoft's snooping on users did not start with Windows 10. There's a lot more Microsoft malware.

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.

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.

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.

There's a lot more iThing spyware, and Apple malware.

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 .

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.)

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 .

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.

The natural extension of monitoring people through “their” phones is proprietary software to make sure they can't “fool” the monitoring .

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.

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 .

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.

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.)

The iThing also tells Apple its geolocation by default, though that can be turned off.

The iBeacon lets stores determine exactly where the iThing is, and get other info too.

Apple can, and regularly does, remotely extract some data from iPhones for the state .

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 .

There is a way to deactivate iCloud , but it's active by default so it still counts as a surveillance functionality.

(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.”

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. […]

iThings automatically upload to Apple's servers all the photos and videos they make.

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.

iPhones send lots of personal data to Apple's servers . Big Brother can get them from there.

Apple proposes a 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.

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”.

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

However, to truly protect people's privacy, we must prevent Google and other companies from getting this personal information in the first place!

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.

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 .

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 .

Samsung's back door provides access to any file on the system.

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.

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.

Some portable phones are sold with spyware sending lots of data to China .

Android tracks location for Google even when “location services” are turned off, even when the phone has no SIM card .

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 .

Facebook's app got “consent” to upload call logs automatically from Android phones while disguising what the “consent” was for.

Forbes exonerates the same wrongs when the culprits are not Chinese, but we condemn this no matter who does it.

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!

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.

Spyware in many e-readers—not only the Kindle: they report even which page the user reads at what time .

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!

E-books can contain JavaScript code, and sometimes this code snoops on readers .

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.

The fact that this is used for repression of forbidden sharing makes it even more vicious.

Foundry's graphics software reports information to identify who is running it . The result is often a legal threat demanding a lot of money.

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).

The Alipay Health Code app estimates whether the user has Covid-19 and tells the cops directly.

The Amazon Ring app does surveillance for other companies as well as for Amazon.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

Some nonfree period-tracking apps including MIA Fem and Maya send intimate details of users' lives to Facebook.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Many nonfree apps have a surveillance feature for recording all the users' actions in interacting with the app.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Some Android apps track the phones of users that have deleted them.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.)

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.

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.

A study found 234 Android apps that track users by listening to ultrasound from beacons placed in stores or played by TV programs.

Faceapp appears to do lots of surveillance, judging by how much access it demands to personal data in the device.

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.

Pairs of Android apps can collude to transmit users' personal data to servers. A study found tens of thousands of pairs that collude.

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.

The Meitu photo-editing app sends user data to a Chinese company.

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.

A 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.

Google's new voice messaging app logs all conversations.

Facebook's new Magic Photo app scans your mobile phone's photo collections for known faces, and suggests you to share 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

More than 73% and 47% of mobile applications, for Android and iOS respectively share personal, behavioral and location information of their users with third parties.

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!

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.

Gratis Android apps (but not free software) connect to 100 tracking and advertising URLs, on the average.

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.

Many proprietary apps for mobile devices report which other apps the user has installed. Twitter is doing this in a way that at least is visible and optional. Not as bad as what the others do.

The Simeji keyboard is a smartphone version of Baidu's spying IME .

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.

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.