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Uninstall the NightOwl app

robins.one

231–236 of 236 posts

Re: Uninstall the NightOwl app

#231
post #11

There's gotta be some law that could be passed about stuff like this. Software should have an implicit contract that it does what it says and not something wildly different than it, with harsh penalties for violations.

I mean, contractual terms that are implied by statute exist. In English consumer contract law—which since 2015 has been extended due to the EU Consumer Rights Directive to cover digital content—includes an implied term that the goods are of satisfactory quality, and when it's a continuing service (including something like a digital content service like Netflix or Spotify, or a software product with updates), it doesn't radically depart from what's initially offered.

See https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/part/1/chapter/...

Most jurisdictions have something broadly similar (albeit often not quite up-to-date around software and digital products). Everywhere in the EU will have laws that implement the EU's Consumer Rights Directive.

Which is great and would apply if you'd paid money for it. NightOwl is free (as in beer). The expectations the law sets out regulating the sale of goods and services do not apply when no money has changed hands.

Which I'd argue is pretty much right: while it sucks that companies get taken over and have spyware crap put into products, the idea that, say, a teenager who is hacking around and building stuff to learn how to code, puts up a project they've made as open source or a freeware download, does something silly like the left-pad debacle, then gets sued—potentially by a big corporate behemoth with very deep pockets and very scary lawyers—for a series of acts which involved them writing some software for no money. Regulation of technology should rest far heavier on the shoulders of Google, Microsoft, Apple and so on than it does on a hobbyist or small indie dev creating freebie menubar utilities or Chrome extensions or whatever.

The difficulty of ensuring those little freebie and open source apps don't become a vector for supply chain attacks remains difficult. Much better sandboxing and OS app-level permissioning, good network monitoring and anomaly detection on a per-app level, and building trust into packaging/distribution processes - these are all slow, grinding, incomplete ways to improve this. Lawsuits probably aren't.

Re: Uninstall the NightOwl app

#232
post #189

I hate silent takeovers so much. Chrome developer extensions are another very popular thing for bad actors to buy out and replace with malware, and it sucks.

As a maintainer of a semi-popular chrome extension[1], I receive so many buy-out offers that I started publicly collecting them[2] for everyone to see. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hover-zoom%20/pccc... [2] https://github.com/extesy/hoverzoom/discussions/670

what is the difference between hoverzoom and Imagus?

Re: Uninstall the NightOwl app

#234
post #59
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is this a common slang in infosec? I've never seen it used like this and it has highly insensitive connotations for me in other contexts.

Well there's the computer "virus" metaphor. Arguably one of the most mainstream concepts of information security. There's also attack "vector".

Re: Uninstall the NightOwl app

#235
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with free apps. Very few people want to donate, no decent company is interested in buying the app and making it profitable, so all that's left are the worst kind of companies who buy these extensions and apps to exploit the users. All these free apps have value but unfortunately it doesn't translate to any income for the developer so they find other ways.

And their values are what exactly? They offer something for free with no reasonable expectation of compensation then rug pull by selling out. It’s hard to be sympathetic. If you want to get paid to write code then get a job writing code.

Conversely, since it's free do they not have a right to sell their app (even if selling it to someone evil is dickish) just as they have a right to decide to "update" it to remove well-liked functionality? Or just as they have the right to update it to add ads that support the dev of the app?

People/users will complain about all of these. I've especially seen people complain about ads; the only real issue I see is when there's no alternative to ads provided (ie subscription, pay a couple dollars to buy a copy of the app, etc). It's Google's mistake, tbh, as that's the common rhetoric with Youtube, people got it for free for too long to be happy with more ads. Blame the people who're uploading "120 hours of black screen" multiple times per day.

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