A user by the name of Zack Smith published an article on his website entitled "Is There Spyware in Ubuntu?" and targeted at Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Jane Silber, the CEO of Canonical.

This is not the first time someone is accusing Ubuntu of spying on users, as three years ago Richard Stallman called Ubuntu a spyware OS because of the integration of Amazon Search engine that collected users' desktop search activity and sent the data over to Amazon.

According to Zack Smith, the Ubuntu Linux operating system should not be trusted because of Canonical's new CEO, Jane Silber, whose previous job was at the C4 Systems division of General Dynamics within the US Military Industrial Complex, which focuses on using computers for spying.

"There is no reason to assume that the compiled executables and libraries that comprise most of Ubuntu are built from the same source code that Canonical makes publicly available," says Zack Smith. "It may have had 'patches' added that provide spying capability. Any spyware in the object code only needs to behave stealthily."

Now, Zack Smith suggests that, if you want to use Ubuntu and stay safe at the same time, you should compile the entire operating system from sources, similar to how Gentoo Linux is installed, a process that will take you at least two or three days. OK, but how about updates? Maybe we shouldn't be using the Internet at all...