LJ, what do you think of this warning on join-lemmy.org? (lemm.ee)

submitted 6 months ago by anidfb@lemm.ee to c/syncforlemmy@lemmy.world

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[-] Zagorath@aussie.zone 41 points 6 months ago

I find warnings like this rather amusing, because unless you compiled it yourself, even an open source application could secretly have malicious data-harvesting code added to it.

[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 37 points 6 months ago

F-Droid has verified and reproducible builds.

On the Play Store or iOS App Store, though, anything goes.

[-] Omniraptor@lemm.ee 4 points 6 months ago

Well this also assumes you trust fdroid but yeah

[-] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 6 months ago

Eh I think that's fair. You don't have to trust fdroid per se, so much as trust that they're not collaborating with a specific developer. It's a much, much narrower condition. (Or alternatively, trust in their competence to have developed a system that works, but not that they are doing things without being malicious, which is a worthwhile discussion, but not quite the same as the one we're having here.)

[-] Tier1BuildABear@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago

Isn't the point of open source that you can check the code for yourself though? Can't do that with closed source

[-] morrowind@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago

Have you?

Or are you just trusting someone else?

I trust LJ

[-] Tier1BuildABear@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Have I what? Read all open source code? I was replying to someone else, and not about any particular app. It's just way harder to sneak something malicious into open source code than closed source, trust only gets you so far. It's just common sense.

[-] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You can check the code for unintentional vulnerabilities, or intentionally added in by a contributor, but you can't do anything about something intentionally added in later in the process by the person responsible for managing the build and distribution of the application.