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These days there are so many apps infested with spyware or adware, and it almost seems as if the stores themselves are promoting them in exchange for a cut. And some apps that start off clean get "updated" to include ads and spying. How do you find free apps that aren't infested?
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Ask Soylent: Where to Get Spyware-Free Apps
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Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Saturday June 06 2015, @04:02PM
You should be able to find them in your distro's repository.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DarkMorph on Saturday June 06 2015, @04:13PM
On the off-chance you may be wondering why ChatSecure disappeared from F-Droid, you need to add the Guardian Project's repo to your F-Droid. It's listed there. See: https://guardianproject.info/fdroid/ [guardianproject.info]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday June 06 2015, @04:19PM
I seem to remember some apps in F-Droid with ads, but I believe you are warned. I may also be remembering incorrectly and am too lazy to check.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday June 06 2015, @11:23PM
Usually (at least, I've never seen an exception so far) the f-droid versions of apps strip out the Google ads functionality because it's non-free, and the descriptions include warning in red text about things like "endorses non-free services" etc. If you browse the apps from the website you can go to a wiki entry for each app that usually gives some extra information, too.
Theoretically you could still be getting spyware I suppose, because there's nothing preventing the source from being malicious and just unread (or thoroughly obfuscated), but it's a safer bet than picking a random app off the play store.
The negative (because there's always one) is that the f-droid app can't do bulk updates, so for each app that has an update you have to tap it, tap the version you want, wait for download, then accept the new install. This isn't a UI failure on F-droid's part, though, it's a restriction Google imposes on everyone but themselves.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:59PM
nothing to do with Google, I was thinking of things like AdBlock that inject their own ads.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:19PM
Oh, no clue. Nothing I've installed had done anything like that. It seems to be rare, at least compared to stuff on the Play store, but that doesn't mean nobody does it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @06:38PM
Because the apps in F-Droid are open source they strip out the advertising library and replace it with one that doesn't do anything. It does mention this in the package info, so maybe that is what you were thinking of. Perhaps they didn't used to do this, but have since I started using it, which I think is more than 2 years, perhaps 3.
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:17AM
Thanks! F-droid sounds exactly like what I was looking for.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Saturday June 06 2015, @11:40PM
Just going to add that, even if you're not using Linux|BSD, this is still useful advice if you're hunting desktop apps. Most -- but not all -- popular FOSS software tends to make its way to Windows and/or OS X as well, so you can search the Ubuntu [ubuntu.com] or Debian [debian.org] package lists to find software. If you find a package that seems interesting, it includes info about the project's homepage, which can be used to find binaries for other OSes.