| |||||||||||||
Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?Posted Dec 10, 2012 11:52 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544)In reply to: Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? by oever Parent article: Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? Software that spies on you is spyware. It doesn't matter if it's free or prorietary.
(Log in to post comments)
Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? Posted Dec 10, 2012 15:33 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> Software that spies on you is spyware. It doesn't matter if it's free or prorietary.
True, but is this really spying on you?
For me, Spyware is when the software claims to be doing one thing and is sending your information out to someone. They key here is being deceptive about it.
It's hard to argue that this is doing so without your knowledge, at least after the very first time that you use it and get results back from Amazon.
They are not being deceptive about this, they are advertizing the Amazon results as a feature.
If this was scanning your system to gather information and sending it out over the Internet while claiming to do something else, I would be up in arms about this as well, but sending something that you are searching for to a search engine is not being deceptive.
Calling this "spyware" dilutes the term and weakens fighting real spyware.
Stallman: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? Posted Dec 10, 2012 22:06 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> Calling this "spyware" dilutes the term and weakens fighting real spyware.
I tend to agree with this. But it *is* adware. But, just like android adware, it's simple to turn it off.
|
|||||||||||||