Post #4254047

2026-07-30 21:17 UTC

@noahraketic@infosec.exchange Thanks. I looked it up. I guess you mean What We Talk About When We Talk About Malware. To me, it seems fair. Google is demanding that Android developers contractually undertake to never distribute "malware or other harmful applications", without defining what those terms mean: With the absence of any formal definition, standard, or guideline, it implicitly states: …and “malware” means whatever we say it means. The F-droid post points out that ADV, Google's new Android component, acts against the interests of users and developers. In this sense, it meets Google's intentionally vague definition of malware. Moreover, users were effectively tricked into installing it without informed consent, in the guise of an ordinary update. In this sense, it was distributed like a Trojan horse.

Replies (1)

@noahraketic@infosec.exchange 2026-07-30 21:25

@modem_down@thebrainbin.org @fdroid What do you think a normal user is going to think when they read that their phone is being infected with malware? Do you think that they're going to read the rest of an article and understand the rhetoric? No, what happens is they read that, and then immediately begin panicking and trying to figure out what to do. I had 3 people I know contact me about this, asking what they are supposed to do, and every time I had to tell them that it's a lie. It's just a harmful attempt to try to get people's attention, from a movement that is rightfully losing people's interest. Marcprux's argument basically sums up to, "Google didn't copy-paste the definition of 'Malware' for us in their terms of service, therefore the term doesn't have any meaning." It's not a trojan horse or malware by any normal understanding of the word, it is an anti-feature which users can simply opt out of if they want to.

Open ##4254045