Some malicious functionalities mediate sabotage, i.e. abusive interference of the developer into the use of the software, with harmful consequences for the users. Examples of such situations are listed below.

• 2024-01

  UHD Blu-ray disks are loaded with malware of the worst kinds. Not only does playback of these disks on a PC require proprietary software and hardware that enforce AACS, a very nasty DRM, but developers of software players are forbidden from disclosing any source code. The user could also lose the ability to play AACS-restricted disks anytime by attempting to play a new Blu-ray disk.

• 2023-12

  Newag, a Polish railway manufacturer, puts DRM inside trains to prevent third-party repairs.

  • The train's software contains code to detect if the GPS coordinates are near some third party repairers, or the train has not been running for some time. If yes, the train will be “locked up” (i.e. bricked). It was also possible to unlock it by pressing a secret combination of buttons in the cockpit, but this ability was removed by a manufacturer's software update.

  • The train will also lock up after a certain date, which is hardcoded in the software.

  • The company pushes a software update that detects if the DRM code has been bypassed, i.e. the lock should have been engaged but the train is still operational. If yes, the controller cabin screen will display a scary message warning about “copyright violation”.

• 2023-11

  To block non-Apple repairs, Apple encodes the iMonster serial number in the original parts. This is called “parts pairing”. Swapping parts between working iMonsters of the same model causes malfunction or disabling of some functionalities. Part replacement may also trigger persistent alerts, unless it is done by an Apple store.

• 2023-11

  Chamberlain Group blocks users from using third-party software with its garage openers. This is an intentional attack on using free software. The official garage opener proprietary mobile app is now also infested with ads, including up-selling its other services and devices.

• 2023-05

  HP delivers printers with a universal back door, and recently used it to sabotage them by remotely installing malware. The malware makes the printer refuse to function with non-HP ink cartrides, and even with old HP cartridges which HP now declares to have “expired.” HP calls the back door “dynamic security,” and has the gall to claim that this “security” protects users from malware.

  If you own an HP printer that can still use non-HP cartridges, we urge you to disconnect it from the internet. This will ensure that HP doesn't sabotage it by “updating” its software.

  Note how the author of the Guardian article credulously repeats HP's assertion that the “dynamic security” feature protects users against malware, not recognizing that the article demonstrates it does the opposite.

• 2022-08

  Some Epson printers are programmed to stop working after they have printed a predetermined number of pages, on the pretext that ink pads become saturated with ink. This constitutes an unacceptable infringement on users' freedom to use their printers as they wish, and on their right to repair them.

• 2022-07

  The nonfree software in a Tesla artificially limits the car's driving range, demanding ransom to unlock the battery's full charge.

  This is one more reason why cars must not be “connected.”

• 2022-07

  ATMs and vending machines in Russia run nonfree software—The machines' owners cannot fix them.

• 2021-11

  NordicTrack, a company that sells exercise machines with ability to show videos limits what people can watch, and recently disabled a feature that was originally functional. This happened through automatic update and probably involved a universal back door.

• 2021-10

  Adobe has licensed its Flash Player to China's Zhong Cheng Network who is offering the program bundled with spyware and a back door that can remotely deactivate it.

  Adobe is responsible for this since they gave Zhong Cheng Network permission to do this. This injustice involves “misuse” of the DMCA, but “proper,” intended use of the DMCA is a much bigger injustice. There is a series of errors related to DMCA.

• 2021-05

  A motorcycle company named Klim is selling airbag vests with different payment methods, one of them is through a proprietary subscription-based option that will block the vest from inflating if the payments don't go through.

  They say there is a 30-days grace period if you miss a payment but the grace period is no excuse to the insecurity.

• 2020-11

  Apple has implemented a malware in its computers that imposes surveillance on users and reports users' computing to Apple.

  The reports are even unencrypted and they've been leaking this data for two years already. This malware is reporting to Apple what user opens what program at what time. It also gives Apple power to sabotage users' computing.

• 2020-11

  A new app published by Google lets banks and creditors deactivate people's Android devices if they fail to make payments. If someone's device gets deactivated, it will be limited to basic functionality, such as emergency calling and access to settings.

• 2020-10

  Samsung is forcing its smartphone users in Hong Kong (and Macau) to use a public DNS in Mainland China, using software update released in September 2020, which causes many unease and privacy concerns.

• 2020-08

  Oculus headsets require users to identify themselves to Facebook. This will give Facebook free rein to pervasively snoop on Oculus users.

• 2020-07

  The Focals eyeglass display, with snooping microphone, has been eliminated. Google eliminated it by buying the manufacturer and shutting it down. It also shut down the server these devices depend on, which caused the ones already sold to cease to function.

  It may be a good thing to wipe out this product—for “smart,” read “snoop”—but Google didn't do that for the sake of privacy. Rather, it was eliminating competition for its own snooping product.

• 2020-07

  The Mellow sous-vide cooker is tethered to a server. The company suddenly turned this tethering into a subscription, forbidding users from taking advantage of the “advanced features” of the cooker unless they pay a monthly fee.

• 2019-12

  iMonsters and Android phones, when used for work, give employers powerful snooping and sabotage capabilities if they install their own software on the device. Many employers demand to do this. For the employee, this is simply nonfree software, as fundamentally unjust and as dangerous as any other nonfree software.

• 2019-10

  Adobe has cancelled the software subscriptions of all users in Venezuela. This demonstrates how a requirement for subscription can be turned into a tool for sabotage.

• 2019-09

  Tesla users claim Tesla force-installed software to cut down on battery range, rather than replace the defective batteries. Tesla did this to avoid having to run their warranty.

  This means that proprietary software can potentially be a way to commit perjury with impunity.

• 2019-09

  Best Buy made controllable appliances and shut down the service to control them through.

  Best Buy acknowledged that it was mistreating its customers by doing so, and offered reimbursement of the affected appliances. The fact remains, however, that tethering a device to a server is a way of restricting and harassing users. The nonfree software in the device is what stops users from cutting the tether.

• 2019-08

  When Apple suspects a user of fraud, it judges the case secretly and presents the verdict as a fait accompli. The punishment to a user found guilty is being cut off for life, which more-or-less cripples the user's Apple devices forever. There is no appeal.

• 2019-05

  Adobe revoked the license of some older versions of its applications, and warned customers that they can get sued for using them.

  This is further proof that users of nonfree software are in the hands of its developer.

• 2019-04

  The Jibo robot toys were tethered to the manufacturer's server, and the company made them all cease to work by shutting down that server.

  The shutdown might ironically be good for their users, since the product was designed to manipulate people by presenting a phony semblance of emotions, and was most certainly spying on them.

• 2019-04

  Microsoft has been force-installing a “remediation” program on computers running certain versions of Windows 10. Remediation, in Microsoft's view, means tampering with users' settings and files, notably to “repair” any components of the updating system that users may have intentionally disabled, and thus regain full power over them. Microsoft repeatedly pushed faulty versions of this program to users' machines, causing numerous problems, some of which critical.

  This exemplifies the arrogant and manipulative attitude that proprietary software developers have learned to adopt toward the people they are supposedly serving. Migrate to a free operating system if you can!

  If your employer makes you run Windows, tell the financial department how this wastes your time dealing with endless connections and premature hardware failures.

• 2019-04

  Ebooks “bought” from Microsoft's store check that their DRM is valid by connecting to the store every time their “owner” wants to read them. Microsoft is going to close this store, bricking all DRM'ed ebooks it has ever “sold”. (The article additionally highlights the pitfalls of DRM.)

  This is another proof that a DRM-encumbered product doesn't belong to the person who bought it. Microsoft said it will refund customers, but this is no excuse for selling them restricted books.

• 2019-03

  The British supermarket Tesco sold tablets which were tethered to Tesco's server for reinstalling default settings. Tesco turned off the server for old models, so now if you try to reinstall the default settings, it bricks them instead.

• 2019-02

  Twenty nine “beauty camera” apps that used to be on Google Play had one or more malicious functionalities, such as stealing users' photos instead of “beautifying” them, pushing unwanted and often malicious ads on users, and redirecting them to phishing sites that stole their credentials. Furthermore, the user interface of most of them was designed to make uninstallation difficult.

  Users should of course uninstall these dangerous apps if they haven't yet, but they should also stay away from nonfree apps in general. All nonfree apps carry a potential risk because there is no easy way of knowing what they really do.

• 2018-11

  Foundry's graphics software reports information to identify who is running it. The result is often a legal threat demanding a lot of money.

  The fact that this is used for repression of forbidden sharing makes it even more vicious.

  This illustrates that making unauthorized copies of nonfree software is not a cure for the injustice of nonfree software. It may avoid paying for the nasty thing, but cannot make it less nasty.

• 2018-10

  Apple and Samsung deliberately degrade the performance of older phones to force users to buy their newer phones.

• 2018-10

  Printer manufacturers are very innovative—at blocking the use of independent replacement ink cartridges. Their “security upgrades” occasionally impose new forms of cartridge DRM. HP and Epson have done this.

• 2018-07

  The Jawbone fitness tracker was tethered to a proprietary phone app. In 2017, the company shut down and made the app stop working. All the existing trackers stopped working forever.

  The article focuses on a further nasty fillip, that sales of the broken devices continued. But we think that is a secondary issue; it made the nasty consequences extend to some additional people. The fundamental wrong was to design the devices to depend on something else that didn't respect users' freedom.

• 2018-06

  The game Metal Gear Rising for MacOS was tethered to a server. The company shut down the server, and all copies stopped working.

• 2018-05

  Apple has blocked Telegram from upgrading its app for a month.

  This evidently has to do with Russia's command to Apple to block Telegram in Russia.

  The Telegram client is free software on other platforms, but not on iThings. Since they are jails, they don't permit any app to be free software.

• 2017-11

  Logitech will sabotage all Harmony Link household control devices by turning off the server through which the products' supposed owners communicate with them.

  The owners suspect this is to pressure them to buy a newer model. If they are wise, they will learn, rather, to distrust any product that requires users to talk with them through some specialized service.

• 2017-10

  MacOS High Sierra forcibly reformats SSD boot drives, and changes the file system from HFS+ to APFS, which cannot be accessed from GNU/Linux, Windows or even older versions of MacOS.

• 2017-10

  The Canary home surveillance camera has been sabotaged by its manufacturer, turning off many features unless the user starts paying for a subscription.

  With manufacturers like these, who needs security breakers?

  The purchasers should learn the larger lesson and reject connected appliances with embedded proprietary software. Every such product is a temptation to commit sabotage.

• 2017-09

  Tesla used software to limit customers to using just part of the battery of some cars.

• 2017-08

  Sonos told all its customers, “Agree” to snooping or the product will stop working. Another article says they won't forcibly change the software, but people won't be able to get any upgrades and eventually it will stop working.

• 2017-06

  Apple will stop fixing bugs for older model iThings.

  Meanwhile, Apple stops people from fixing problems themselves; that's the nature of proprietary software.

• 2017-05

  Bird and rabbit pets were implemented for Second Life by a company that tethered their food to a server. It shut down the server and the pets more or less died.

• 2017-04

  Microsoft has made Windows 7 and 8 cease to function on certain new computers, effectively forcing their owners to switch to Windows 10.

• 2017-04

  Microsoft has dropped support for Windows 7 and 8 on recent processors in a big hurry.

  It makes no difference what legitimate reasons Microsoft might have for not doing work to support them. If it doesn't want to do this work, it should let users do the work.

• 2017-04

  Anova sabotaged users' cooking devices with a downgrade that tethered them to a remote server. Unless users create an account on Anova's servers, their cookers won't function.

• 2017-04

  The iPhone 7 contains DRM specifically designed to brick it if an “unauthorized” repair shop fixes it. “Unauthorized” essentially means anyone besides Apple.

  (The article uses the term “lock” to describe the DRM, but we prefer to use the term digital handcuffs.)

• 2016-12

  The developer of Ham Radio Deluxe sabotaged a customer's installation as punishment for posting a negative review.

  Most proprietary software companies don't use their power so harshly, but it is an injustice that they all have such power.

• 2016-09

  HP's firmware downgrade imposed DRM on some printers, which now refuse to function with third-party ink cartridges.

• 2016-06

  In its efforts to trick users of Windows 7 and 8 into installing all-spying Windows 10 against their will, Microsoft forced their computers to silently download… the whole of Windows 10! Apparently, this was done through a universal back door. Not only did the unwanted downloads jeopardize important operations in regions of the world with poor connectivity, but many of the people who let installation proceed found out that this “upgrade” was in fact a downgrade.

• 2016-06

  Apple stops users from fixing the security bugs in Quicktime for Windows, while refusing to fix them itself.

• 2016-06

  Once Microsoft has tricked a user into accepting installation of Windows 10, they find that they are denied the option to cancel or even postpone the imposed date of installation.

  This demonstrates what we've said for years: using proprietary software means letting someone have power over you, and you're going to get screwed sooner or later.

• 2016-05

  The Apple Music client program scans the user's file system for music files, copies them to an Apple server, and deletes them.

• 2016-04

  Revolv is a device that managed “smart home” operations: switching lights, operate motion sensors, regulating temperature, etc. Its proprietary software depends on a remote server to do these tasks. On May 15th, 2016, Google/Alphabet intentionally broke it by shutting down the server.

  If it were free software, users would have the ability to make it work again, differently, and then have a freedom-respecting home instead of a “smart” home. Don't let proprietary software control your devices and turn them into $300 out-of-warranty bricks. Insist on self-contained computers that run free software!

• 2016-03

  Electronic Arts made one of its games permanently unplayable by shutting down its servers. This game was heavily reliant on the company's servers, and because the software is proprietary, users can't modify it to make it connect to some other server. If the game were free, people could still play what they purchased.

• 2016-02

  iOS version 9 for iThings sabotages them irreparably if they were repaired by someone other than Apple. Apple eventually backed off from this policy under criticism from the users. However, it has not acknowledged that this was wrong.

• 2016-01

  FTDI's proprietary driver for its USB-to-serial chips has been designed to sabotage alternative compatible chips so that they no longer work. Microsoft is installing this automatically as an “upgrade”.

• 2015-12

  Philips “smart” lightbulbs had initially been designed to interact with other companies' smart light bulbs, but later the company updated the firmware to disallow interoperability.

  If a product is “smart”, and you didn't build it, it is cleverly serving its manufacturer against you.

• 2015-11

  Google has long had a back door to remotely unlock an Android device, unless its disk is encrypted (possible since Android 5.0 Lollipop, but still not quite the default).

• 2015-11

  Windows 10 “upgrades” delete applications without asking permission.

• 2015-10

  Apple forced millions of iThings to download a system upgrade without asking the users. Apple did not forcibly install the upgrade but the downloading alone caused lots of trouble.

• 2015-09

  Lenovo stealthily installed crapware and spyware via BIOS on Windows installs. Note that the specific sabotage method Lenovo used did not affect GNU/Linux; also, a “clean” Windows install is not really clean since Microsoft puts in its own malware.

• 2015-04

  Vizio used a firmware “upgrade” to make its TVs snoop on what users watch. The TVs did not do that when first sold.

• 2015-04

  Mac OS X had an intentional local back door for 4 years, which could be exploited by attackers to gain root privileges.

• 2015-03

  Microsoft cut off security fixes for Windows XP, except to some big users that pay exorbitantly.

  Microsoft is going to cut off support for some Internet Explorer versions in the same way.

  A person or company has the right to cease to work on a particular program; the wrong here is Microsoft does this after having made the users dependent on Microsoft, because they are not free to ask anyone else to work on the program for them.

• 2015-03

  Amazon downgraded the software in users' Swindles so that those already rooted would cease to function at all.

• 2014-12

  Apple deleted from iPods the music that users had got from internet music stores that competed with iTunes.

• 2014-10

  Nintendo remotely sabotaged the Wii U, making it refuse to work unless the user agrees to a new EULA.

  We can be quite sure this EULA is unjust because injustice is the only motive for imposing an EULA.

• 2014-05

  LG disabled network features on previously purchased “smart” TVs, unless the purchasers agreed to let LG begin to snoop on them and distribute their personal data.

• 2014-01

  Some proprietary games lure children to spend their parents' money.

• 2013-09

  The NSA has put back doors into nonfree encryption software. We don't know which ones they are, but we can be sure they include some widely used systems. This reinforces the point that you can never trust the security of nonfree software.

• 2013-06

  Microsoft informs the NSA of bugs in Windows before fixing them.

• 2013-05

  Adobe applications have time bombs: they stop working after a certain time, after which the user must pay to extend the time.

  Once there was a problem with the servers that these programs use to check who has paid, and the applications refused to work for anyone.

• 2013-01

  Oracle's nonfree Java plug-in for browsers sneakily installs other annoying proprietary software.

  That article disregards all other bad things about proprietary software. For instance, it regards the inclusion of proprietary Flash Player (which has a surveillance feature and DRM) in Chrome as a good thing. Chrome is a proprietary browser with a universal back door.

  We don't agree with the article's views on those issues, but we present it as a factual reference.

  In 2014, Oracle insisted on continuing this practice.

• 2010-03

  Sony sabotaged the Playstation 3 with a firmware downgrade that removed the feature that allowed users to run GNU/Linux on it.

  Sony subsequently sent police after Geohot, after he cracked the code that blocked users from changing the firmware, and we responded by calling for a boycott of Sony.

  In a court settlement Sony is now paying for the sabotage.

• 2007-09

  An Apple firmware “upgrade” bricked iPhones that had been unlocked. The “upgrade” also deactivated applications not approved by Apple censorship. All this was apparently intentional.