I'm always amused by the way some people try to extend the definition of malware beyond its scope. This isn't malware. It's just anonymous usage tracking. If you don't like it you can turn it off. I hope you don't use a smartphone because the amount of intrinsic "malware" you must be subjected to must be unbearable.
"Malware" is an umbrella term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive software, including computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, scareware, and other malicious programs. It can take the form of executable code, scripts, active content, and other software.
Definitions vary, but I once wrote these notes for the definition in a security policy. It is probably more broad than what some people would write.
Malware
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- Any software that actively attempts to do any of the following:
- Do harm to the system, applications or data
- Deliberately weakens system security
- By changing system or user security settings
- Contains or installs backdoors
- Downloads updates as executables
- Use executables to wrap otherwise readable data
- Expects higher or more privileges than is needed by it's function.
- Circumvent the wishes or intention of the user
- Makes it self the default application for file-types that already have an application assigned to them
- Inserts itself into other applications against the users expectation (eg. as a plugin)
- Uses the privileges of other applications to circumvent system policy
- Hide its activity from inspection
- Anti-debugging, and other rootkit like behaviour
- Use "dark patterns" to trick the user into performing or agreeing to some action
- Installs toolbars, etc.
- Compromise the privacy of the user
- Phones home, access data irrelevant to it's function
- Resists removal
It does not compromise the user's privacy in any way. GA prohibits PII. Also, the webmaster has to opt-in to share the data with Google in the first place.
People just LOOVE to be outraged. For example in this thread people rage about google getting hands on their data. When I point out that the webmaster has to explicitly chose to share the data with google, I get downvoted. When I say that GA prohibits the use of PII, I get downvoted. It doesn't matter that I'm right. People WANT to be outraged. Reason, no reason, doesn't matter.
I didn't say that this usage of GA is malware, I said that GA, the network, is a malware. So while Homebrew may (or may not) be protecting their users identities while using a malware service, they are still choosing to use a malware service.
Tracking people's online activity through a large percentage of the internet, without their consent or even knowledge qualifies as malicious to me.
But surely you can see the similarity here. The tracking software wasn't in Homebrew before, is added without asking you when you update, and is completely useless to you as a user but builds information about you and sends it to a third party.
If it's not malware, it's certainly really similar to it.
"Malware" is an umbrella term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive software, including computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, scareware, and other malicious programs. It can take the form of executable code, scripts, active content, and other software.