Bonum Certa Men Certa

FUD About Android and Other Free Software Projects

Anti-Japanese Propaganda - Take Day Off
Propaganda from the US Office for War Information poster implying
that working less helped the Axis powers



Summary: New case of disinformation about Google's Linux-based mobile platform; other noteworthy cases of FUD

WATCH OUT for some reckless reporting about Android, which one writer dissected and explained in this short article:

Android Wallpaper Apps Falsely Accused of Spyware and Stealing Sensitive User Data [FUD]



Wow! A recent VentureBeat article put the blogosphere and smartphone industry on its heels when a reported score of wallpaper Android apps were accused of being malicious. The wallpaper apps created by “jackeey,wallpaper” and “IceskYsl@1sters!” are indeed the same developer under separate accounts, and accused of sending private sensitive user data to servers in China to a website www.imnet.us. The worse part about all of this is no one, I mean no one fact checked accurately. VentureBeat, The Wall Street Journal, CNET, Yahoo! News, Fast Company, Fortune, PC World, Computerworld, Gizmodo, AppleInsider, etc. the list goes on and on and everybody jumped the gun in reporting the issue. No one asked the developer about it nor really looked into the methods Lookout used in building it’s report called the App Genome Project.


There are also reports like "That Cute Android Wallpaper May Be Sending Your Data to China" (which blames the application, not Google).

What's a nice app like "My Little Pony" doing in Shenzhen? Delivering the personal information of millions of Android users to a mysterious website, that's what. The App Genome Project has found that a large proportion of mobile apps -- not just this one -- contain third-party code with the ability to interact with sensitive data in a way that may not be apparent to users or developers, but their intentions may not be malicious.


We ought to watch out for FUD that confuses the platform and the binaries that run separately on top of it. There are snakes in the grass. Speaking of which, two Microsoft partners/proponents (Mitchell Ashley in particular) still run IDG's "open source" show; yes, it's just them two supposedly representing "open source". We also warned about it two weeks ago. Their latest episode is about Suricata and for some background see this article ("Snort Creator Slams Open Source IDS Suricata":

Martin Roesch, the creator of Snort, by some accounts the world's most-used intrusion detection system (IDS), recently launched a war of words against Suricata, the new open source IDS.

[...]

Furthermore, he disputed the Sourcefire performance tests. "Those stats are ridiculous, and they refuse to publish" details of the equipment and configuration used, said Jonkman. "We know that we're not, right now, cycle for cycle, faster than Snort … but we're getting six times the performance as Snort on the same hardware, with version 1.0." Version 1.01 was released yesterday.


It sure seems like some FUD is making the rounds here.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October