How PureOS Can Stop Devices From Being Infected With Intrusive Adware!

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Rex M. Lee

Latest posts by Rex M. Lee (see all)

• SXSW 2024 Day 5- AI And Privacy In The News, So I Thought? - March 13, 2024
• Missing from Privacy Legislation- The Abolishment of Surveillance Capitalism (Predatory & Harmful Surveillance Business Practices)! - February 7, 2024
• To Be Free or Not to Be Free- PureOS vs. Android OS, Apple iOS, and MS Windows - December 20, 2023

It has been reported by TechRadar and other publications that over 100 million devices, such as smartphones, have been infected with an intrusive adware that operates in the background without the knowledge of the device owner and/or end user.

The intrusive adware has been identified as Goldoson malware by cybersecurity researchers at McAfee and was distributed by Google Play via intrusive apps intentionally designed to spread the adware.

Adware such as Goldoson are only a symptom of a much larger problem that needs to be addressed which is predatory surveillance and data mining business practices rooted in surveillance capitalism. Solving this is easy when all the source code is transparent and released for audit.

According to cybersecurity researchers, the Goldoson malware is an intrusive adware that clicks on ads in the background without the consent of the device owner who has no idea that their device has been turned into a “zombie” client.

A zombie client is a device that has been taken over by a hacker or an automated bot. Once the device is taken over, the malware can launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack or the bot can click on ads driving revenues for a nefarious advertiser or website, for example.

All of this means that the privacy, security, and safety problems with today’s connected products are related to predatory surveillance and data mining business practices adopted by Google, Apple, and Microsoft the three dominant OS developers in the world.

The fact is Google, Apple, & Microsoft do not offer a secure, private, or safe operating system that supports secure and private apps because their businesses profit from this abuse and their OS source code, plus the source code of the applications themselves is not easily audited to respect the user’s privacy nor security.

This means that devices supported by the Android OS, Apple iOS, and Microsoft Windows 11 OS are purposely designed for consumerism rather than privacy and security.

Predatory surveillance and data mining business practices pose massive privacy, security, and safety threats to end users, plus the end user’s employer because the surveillance and data mining is “indiscriminate” meaning that the app developers are collecting highly confidential business information aside from confidential personal information.

The only solution that can address all threats posed by surveillance capitalism is a private and secure operating system that supports private and secure applications such as a Linux based OS developed for privacy and security.

Purism, a Social Purpose Company, has developed PureOS which focuses on privacy and security—where all the source code is released—that operates on the smartphones, laptops, PCs, and servers that are also manufactured by Purism.

The main reason why a Goldoson Android malware attack is not possible on devices supported by PureOS is the fact the PureOS is developed using free and open-source software which can be audited at any time for security,

To learn more about PureOS, secure apps, and secure devices go to puri.sm.