Microsoft Backtracks On 'Nasty Trick' Upgrade To Windows 10 (bbc.co.uk)

Reader Raging Bool writes: Days after angering many users with its so-called "nasty trick", Microsoft has reversed its crazy decision to infuriate users by upgrading them to Windows 10 automatically. Users were angry that clicking the cross to dismiss the box meant that they had agreed to the upgrade. Based on "customer feedback", Microsoft said it would add another notification that provided customers with "an additional opportunity for cancelling the upgrade". Microsoft told the BBC it had modified the pop-up as a result of criticism: "We've added another notification that confirms the time of the scheduled upgrade and provides the customer an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade. If the customer wishes to continue with their upgrade at the designated time, they can click 'OK' or close the notifications with no further action needed."

Comments

Re:Duh

[evileeyore]

They're not the market leader anymore, they don't have the advantages of monopoly,

While i agree with your overall sentiment the above is not even close to true. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the PC market as it pertains to OS. https://www.netmarketshare.com... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It took the BBC to do this?

[ITRambo]

Why did Microsoft ignore the tsunami of complaints about the definitely tricky upgrade pop up box? Did the BBC embarrass them into submission? This is quite strange. And fuck you Microsoft. That is all.

Re: Duh

[cfalcon]

> Also, Apple gave away Mavericks for free. I don't see anyone complaining that Apple plans to move to a subscription based model for OS X. Why not?

Because Apple sells hardware.
Because Apple doesn't have a history of absolutely rampant customer abuse.
Because Apple has motivation to keep their ecosystem good.
Because Apple has legitimate ways to make money.
Because Apple doesn't hunt down and delete your old version of Solitaire, put a special flag that doesn't let it run in its most modern OS, offer a new version of Solitaire with ads, and then offer a subscription.

Seriously, if you don't think Microsoft's treatment of Solitaire and Minesweeper is a canary, you're being stubborn. If you want Windows 7 Solitaire- which you payed for and own- to work on Windows 10, you must first back it up, and then you must patch the binary to not demand it only run on Windows 7. At which point it runs fine. But this is absolutely a template for how to force people into a subscription model. At the very least, you can see that disabling ads will become a pay service at some point, right? Given that they JUST DID THAT?

Re:Malware trick

[JohnFen]

Microsoft retrofitted much of its Win 10 spyware into Windows 7 updates a while back.

Re:be ware of the leopard

[just_another_sean]

Happy Towel Day!

http://www.towelday.org/

Re:Malware trick

[oh_my_080980980]

At your own risk: ""My attempt to roll it back to Windows 7 resulted in the blue screen of death and a dead PC. I now have to reinstall my home computer from scratch because of this so-called 'free' upgrade."

RTFA.

Re:Malware trick

[JohnFen]

Unlike with Windows 10, with Windows 7 you actually can remove the spyware. Check out this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmas...

Dear Microsoft, an option is missing

[Webmoth]

This controversy would be a non issue if there was an option do not upgrade and don't bug me anymore to upgrade.

Re:Malware trick

[Obfuscant]

Unless you cancel, it will upgrade. That's pretty automatic.

If you enable automatic updates, that pretty manual. That's what's happening here. Users who have opted to automatically install recommended updates are being notified that there is a scheduled update to Windows 10. Clicking the "x" on the notification doesn't stop the scheduled update, it only closes the notification window -- which is what the 'x' is supposed to do.

It's like a notification that pops up that says "you have new email". You wouldn't expect the system to delete your email if you click on the 'x' to close the notification, would you? Of course not. Well, this is a notification that tells you that there is a scheduled update going to happen. Clicking 'x' closes the notification. If you don't want the scheduled thing to happen, change the schedule.

The issue is NOT that "clicking the x performs the update", because it doesn't. The issue is that Microsoft made Windows 10 a recommended update, which is catching people who have automatic updates turned on.

Re:Malware trick

[Gr8Apes]

In short, install W7 from a known "clean" source, as much as that exists, and then manually download and update only those pieces that you deem necessary. There's a list out there somewhere with what you need.

While I may be flippant above, it actually is the right answer for 99% of windows users, including most admins. If you're running any still supported windows, you will need to expend significant effort to ensure that you are both "safe"* and not subject to those "bad" updates.

I say this from the POV of someone that has gone through that process with NT/2K/XP/2003/2008/2008R2 in stripping down the OS to only what was needed, removing large amounts of useless (to me) and insecure components and only keeping those that were needed updated. The first step in any of these processes is to remove Windows Update entirely from the system. The second is download all updates you need. If you're lucky, a service pack can be used and then stripped down post install. In others, be prepared for a couple of days of fun getting everything packaged up. Slipstreaming an install disk used to be the way to go. With the latter few OSes we didn't have to install much, because those were appliances that were heavily restricted and cordoned off from just about everything with only 2 services really available. Keeping up with the updates is a different story though, that's almost a full time job.

* "safe" means you have the updates necessary for security for those components you have running, as much as windows can be made "safe". You'll note elsewhere that my opinion on windows (in)security can be summed up as "a castle built on sand". Everything you code in windows has to design around the masked security tokens they use, where each process must have a maximum permission token for the process with permissions masked for anything you wish to reduce. There is no permission elevation, only removal of mask(s). This is why every buffer exploit in windows is a potential System level process, since just about every process starts with System when it's spawned.

Re:Malware trick

[Darinbob]

Some people have ended up broken when trying to revert and had to reinstall W7 from scratch.

Re:"User's choice"

[Darinbob]

The close button does indeed close the notification. But the rest of the notification is designed to fool people. Most of the dialogue is in older Windows GUI style. The "Upgrade now" choice is a classic button. But the opt out method is not a button but is a metro style web like "link" to click on, with only a change in color and thus easily overlooked (especially by people on Windows 7 not used to the metro UI).

Re:Malware trick

[jez9999]

Here's my personal page I follow for avoiding Win10 & Telemetry:

http://game-point.net/misc/dontEnableAutomaticUpdates/