Another fear keeps me from using desktop wallets is that I am skeptical that these apps may secretly spy on my activity and steal things on my pc. Maybe that's absurd, but who knows? Is electrum open source?
Yes it is an open source. The source code can be checked on Github,
https://github.com/pooler/electrum-ltc You can find the windows version executable here:
https://electrum-ltc.org/ Just make sure you download it from the correct URL