[vox-tech] Spyware For Linux?

[Josh Parsons]

On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 11:08 -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:

> As for whether there's 'spyware' for Linux, that's a good question.
> ...If closed source, people will complain.)

I'm not sure that it's true that linux users would catch closed source
spyware and complain.

To give an example: holding my nose, I installed skype on my laptop last
weekend.  (I play Battle for Wesnoth with a couple of friends who are
not very free-software-aware, and skype is the only really effective
solution for talking to them while playing).

I'd be surprised if skype *doesn't* perform some spyware-like
activities. It's a closed source program that implements a proprietary
network protocol and communicates god-knows-what information to other
machines just to do what it's supposed to do. For all I know it could be
slurping /etc/passwd and feeding it off to skype world domination HQ.
There are legitimate reasons for such a program to read /etc/passwd, so
just running it under strace wouldn't catch it.

Of course they do have a cute graphic that says "no spyware" on their
web site, so they must be OK right?

-- 
Josh Parsons
Philosophy Department
1238 Social Sciences and Humanities Bldg.
University of California
Davis, CA 95616-8673
USA
 
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