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Lenovo Software Update Stealthily Installs Adware
An anonymous reader writes "A recent Lenovo automatic software update has the great feature of displaying annoying pop-up ads for Lenovo products. What's worse, it appears that many users are unable to turn the advertisement 'feature' off, subjecting them to pop-ups every couple of hours. Gee guys, a note about your 20% off sale in my e-mail wouldn't have bothered me that much, but you really had to pop up over top of my PowerPoint slides? I'm sure that all of my office colleagues will be running to order ThinkPads ..."
This is the reason that I build my own computers whenever possible - the manufacturers install crap upon crap on your box. This is just taking it to the next level.
I wonder what it would cost to build computers without the annoying shit installed. Is that all that's making them profitable?
Funny, but this is a serious credibility whack as their products are considered top notch for business. They'll find out when they interfere with business being done, it's a long fall down...
Somehow I think someone in management is busy whacking the undo button as furiously as possible as the media exposure rises.
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
From reading the discussion forums, there are two problems:
1) System is not obeying checkbox to not show specific message again.
2) System is presenting ads through software installed by the vendor, not by email or browser.
At first #1 seems to be the bigger problem, as if you could check a box not to see the message again you'll only be bothered once... until you read the bit about "specific" again. Checking that box by design is supposed to only block that EXACT ad, not others that may come later...
That was indeed an insane choice to include by a vendor. As noted, these could pop up at the most inconvenient time. Even if you dismiss one and it worked, you never know when you may get another.
I'm sure they'll get rid of this soon, but it has to go down in history as one of the bigger WTF moments in vendor specific software installs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The worst virus/malware cleanup I've done in the last year installed itself via an Acrobat reader security vulnerability. "Don't update Acrobat" isn't really a viable solution to their bloat problem because of that class of issue. More useful ones are "Install Foxit Reader" and "Use Evince on Linux".