1 16 min 3 yrs

Corporate governments, security experts and officials remain in support of mass, warrant-less surveillance. But civil libertarians, humane technology companies and others oppose it, noting obvious lack of transparency and espionage to save crooks / cronies. As a cheap smartphone user, you don’t have to worry for Malware / Spyware / Virus, just buy antidotes. You can’t stop white cronies selling missiles / viruses to gray partners and anti-missile / anti-viral vaccines to its black allies in the immediate neighborhood while encouraging colorful conflicts behind scene. Maybe disguised as the big heart savior of global peace and development, broadcasting and TRP advertising on our bugged personal gadgets 24/7! Even desi cronies learned it well, call them third-world ruling robin-hoods! The problem is you’re sitting in a field of cow patties while a bunch of journalists, populists and vendors compete to see who can throw one the farthest.

It’s all crap designed to get you to buy and be an obedient bhakt of (free lure) drugs, software or apps that claims to protect you from these threats. In good cases, such drugs, software or app does absolutely nothing but slow down your devices. In worst cases, it will help ruling Nazi cronies to take over your devices while hiding in penta-vesta bunkers spread across solar system (abusing public / natural resources) to strategically inject lies / hypes during manufactured disasters, ideological conflicts and tech wars. If you have an iOS device, the software can’t even scan what’s happening in other apps, so it’s useless. If you have an Android device, it is also dubious whether malware detection software actually works. Perhaps more than ever before in history, people are confronted with diverse and contradictory information.

This doesn’t mean malware & viruses doesn’t exist or isn’t an issue. It just means we have to adjust the perch that we are looking from. These days, the majority of the malware is not in either the Apple Store or the Google Play, they are already injected deep into their commercially successful branded platforms and Windows pro-buffed. Apple shows vigilante about malware and has a very good record with keeping it out of its store. Google was not so vigilant, but it is catching up citing paid horror stories of its own allies. If you have an iOS device, you’re going to get infected with malware if you jailbreak the device and start “sideloading” apps. Some people do this to get pirated apps; others do this to get apps with more functionality. The problem is that no one checks these apps, and it is very easy for someone to add malware to one.

Android, on the other hand, gives users the ability to “sideload” apps by simply unchecking a settings option — no jailbreaking (“rooting,” in Android parlance) required. Users have good reason to “sideload” apps this way: The Amazonia AWS apps, for example, requires this setting to be unchecked to deliver Amazon’s Kindle-oriented apps to an Android device. When it comes to Android, there are hundreds of app stores, any of which could have malware. Telecom Operators, Political Parties, Online Businesses, Govt Spy Agencies and Big Social Media portals are happily just exploiting massive low end user devices for some growth, big bucks – sounds well on surface as we’re developing and getting smarter somehow anyway!

Millions of Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows espionage smartphones are already flooding the market, more added each day. Moses law to intrude more guinea pigs, mob making mobile apps for use by corporate media to save the masters – whenever, wherever, by all means. The globalization of economics, healthcare and the information-technology revolutions have made it difficult to stop government from giving away or selling secrets for bucks (only to the like-minded and conforming lot).

The agents of espionage have abandoned their cloaks and daggers for new gadgets that give them unlimited access to Internet and IoT devices used by masses to access it, the much advertised hype apps you have on that smart device tracks 24/7 – TRP, clicks, app logs, calls, texts, private chats and everything else without your permission, its the price of being accepted as cool or fool. You may not know even when they spot you in a huge crowd and threaten to stop your implanted pacemaker or remotely insert some deadly viruses using face recognition IoT apps (via Citizen Data Portal) on an invincible drone cloud orbiting few meters above you or a SpaceX sponsored solar colony somewhere in the deep universe, nowhere to run or hide from the great worshiped (genetically mutated) silicon slaves of big tech!

One thought on “Beware of Mobile Malware / Spyware behind those fancy apps / gadgets!

  1. Due to proprietary fancy apps & Service as Software Substitute (SaaSS), user rights are reaching new lows. Being forced to live, work, and learn at a distance from each other has driven many to use proprietary systems for online education, video conferencing, health, test taking, and more.

    It’s not just the pandemic, though. Companies continue doing things with software just because they can, without regard to whether they should. They’re steamrolling us into software-driven cars (scheduled in the US to be on the streets of San Francisco without human backup drivers by the end of the year) which will enable software owners to control our physical movements, and software-powered “doorbells” that enable a terrifying panopticon for bulk surveillance, complementing the always-listening black box personal assistant devices present in far too many homes and pockets.

    In this tornado of technology being developed and deployed at a speed far outpacing actual thinking about its impact, the deliberate, thoughtful, and principled carefulness the FSF has become known for over its thirty-five years is exactly what we need. Free software applies the full intelligence of our global society to any issue. Only with free software can everyone be empowered to raise red flags or help solve problems in ways that aren’t structurally biased toward entrenching the proprietary control currently threatening free societies.

    Join them at https://my.fsf.org/join?pk_campaign=frfall2020&pk_source=wisepoint.org

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