this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The fact that you can't discern what it is doing and it can't be disabled makes it invasive software. There's no shortage of qualified experts who agree with what I said and many others who point out glaring security vulnerabilities that come with using it. I linked a few for your convenience.

https://www.eteknix.com/nsa-may-backdoors-built-intel-amd-processors/

https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/06/amd_cpu_psp_flaw/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-PSP-Disable-Option

I'd say with all of the above at the very least its invasive software that has complete access to your system and all of its files and processes.

Spyware by definition is "Any malicious software that is designed to take partial or full control of a computer's operation without the knowledge of its user." The fact that you can't look into what all it can do makes it capable of doing this.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but even in your quoted definition we don't know that it's spyware. Because 1) we don't know if it takes full control 2) it's there with our knowledge. I still can't agree to your conclusion in your first comment that it is. It might be, but I'd phrase that differently.

blablabla more blabbering around the point below: just pure speculation of what it could possibly be worst case scenario.

Spyware by definition is “Any malicious software"

Cool, but since you have no idea whether or not its malicious calling it spyware is false.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Media definition of spyware for data privacy purposes is exactly that. The difference here is that this is a tool that can be leveraged to make a copy of all the data in your computer and put it on the cloud, among other things. Tik tok and Facebook can't do that and are subject to much bigger scrutiny.