Spyware is malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their privacy or endangering their device’s security. Some people see this definition and find think that spyware is evil and I totally agree. But these same people will not realize the irony of their beliefs.

Ok, and why is most spyware legal? Glad you asked.

Well look closer at the definition and compare it to what BigTech or governments around the world do. They gather information about us, they violate our privacy and the data that some governments collect even put their citizens at risk. And the most funny thing about this thing is the fact that people sign contracts where they accept this violation of our rights.

Yeah, turns out the “terms and conditions” button you click is actually a legal contract.

Now, to be fair. We never sign any contract that allows our governments to spy on us, but we also don’t do anything about it; we don’t protest; we don’t change the apps that are spying on us.

Before any one of my blog’s non-existent readers even thinks about the half-assed argument “Oh I have nothing to hide”, I will quickly dismantle it with the force of 10 GNU GPLv3 Licenses and move on to the next idea. Well if I have nothing to say, then why should I have freedom of speech?

Also if just one of the parties involved in a message exchange(email, SMS, anything really) tries to protect it’s privacy, it won’t be able to because it either can’t send messages to the other party or the messages the other party recieves are being spied on, so the efforts of the first party are pointless.

Privacy is a group project; don’t be the asshole that doesn’t do anything and drags the whole group behind.