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Woman Wins $10,000 Lawsuit Against Microsoft Over Windows 10 Upgrades (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares this story from the Seattle Times:
A few days after Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public last year, Teri Goldstein's computer started trying to download and install the new operating system. The update, which she says she didn't authorize, failed. Instead, the computer she uses to run her Sausalito, California, travel-agency business slowed to a crawl. It would crash, she says, and be unusable for days at a time. "I had never heard of Windows 10," Goldstein said. "Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to update."
When outreach to Microsoft's customer support didn't fix the issue, Goldstein took the software giant to court, seeking compensation for lost wages and the cost of a new computer. She won. Last month, Microsoft dropped an appeal and Goldstein collected a $10,000 judgment from the company.
Microsoft denies any wrongdoing, and says they only halted their appeal to avoid the cost of further litigation.
When outreach to Microsoft's customer support didn't fix the issue, Goldstein took the software giant to court, seeking compensation for lost wages and the cost of a new computer. She won. Last month, Microsoft dropped an appeal and Goldstein collected a $10,000 judgment from the company.
Microsoft denies any wrongdoing, and says they only halted their appeal to avoid the cost of further litigation.
"to avoid the cost of further litigation."
Billion dollar company.
My guess is now a lot of people are going to be suing MS over this. While they deny they did any wrong doing, the court saw it otherwise.
Be seeing you...
While I completly understand that woman and I think she she is completely right being pissed, the problem is that the whole point of automatic updates is to keep those users up to date who otherwise would go "I had never heard of security updates and no one ever asked my if I want those updates". And it's those people who would sue if updates would not happen automatically and they are hacked due to not using the latest patches. Then, all of a sudden, it's "Microsoft should have done this automatically. They have proven that they can do it before" again.
bickerdyke
Bad news - every Windows user will be awarded ..... a free upgrade to Windows 10!
...then the forced upgrades ought to be worth at least that.
Not a couple of weeks ago, I got a card in the mail saying there had been some kind of settlement over front loading washing machines. I went to the web site, clicked some options (it seemed legit; they asked for no personal information, and you had to enter two validation codes from the card) and it seems I'm to get $50 for some defect or other related to mold and my washing machine, a machine which never stopped working and I still use (there is some mold on the door seal, I just wipe it off periodically, other than that it cleans just fine).
If my desktop computer which worked acceptably began downloading a new operating system and then quit working right after, shouldn't I be entitled at least $50 in a class action? My guess is Microsoft didn't quit this lawsuit because it just didn't feel like litigating that day, they did to halt the contagion of a precedent of four or five figure legal decisions over their Win 10 upgrade.
For a lot of use cases, it's not hard to see high costs: new machine, new application version(s) to be installed, data migrated, loss of use, $10k isn't entirely out of range in many business use cases.
I just kind of hope MS ends up with one of those disclaimers in their financial report explaining how they are setting aside $500 million to handle lawsuits resulting from their forced and negligent forced upgrades.
Next time you do this, Microfots, please implement much better hardware and software compatibility checks. Since you discontinued the hardware compatibility center, the consumer has no longer any way to check the readiness of the system for such upgrade.
Truly they were thinking of her. Wouldn't want to drain her finances, now would they?
I honestly didn't do anything wrong, I just didn't want to pay anymore for a lawyer. I am innocent, I swear!
Didn't get Win10 installed, but I wasted about 20 hrs trying to prevent that crap from destroying my business. At $200/hr, can I sue?
Plus that doesn't even begin to count the "opportunity costs" due to the mental anguish avoiding Win10 has caused the last year.
Don't want it. Don't want any of the "spying tools" they've added to Win7, Win8, Win8.1 and 10 either. Mental anguish is a real thing. Should be worth $50K, easy.
Good news - every lawyer will be awarded ..... a free upgrade to Windows 10!
She didn't need a new computer.
"Microsoft denies any wrongdoing, and says they only halted their appeal to avoid the cost of further litigation." MS has some deep pockets. Their given reason makes no sense. They could outspend any litigant.
No! It's a hard earned right to screw over customers!
(Why the customers put up with that is something which mystifies me, actually)
As an IT company who has repaired literally hundreds of failed updates, as well as failed roll backs to the previous operation system (using Microsoft's own "revert me to my previous operation system" restore option, which had maybe a 60% success rate), the cost to consumers has likely been staggering in the aggregate.
While profitable to my company, I can't help but feel like there needs to be a very quick verdict against Microsoft, ruling several hundred dollars to anyone who can show (Via invoice or other means) that they had to pay money to repair the damage/inconvenience Microsoft directly caused as a result of their underhanded tactics to upgrade the world to Windows 10.
If this were a mistake made by some fledgling software company it might be excusable as an oversight, but this is a many decades old software company, with many legal experiences under their belt... this should never have happened and there should be actual repercussions.
I would love to be on that Jury: Yes, you do owe her 10k, and the next person as well, and after that. Microsoft has been abusing its power so long, I could see them in real trouble.
If a few thousand other people who have similarly suffered also sued Microsoft it would send a message. Money talks. Publicity talks. Rinse and repeat and these kinds of things will no longer happen.
Where do i sign up?!
I know of at least one book where Goldstein was a dissident against a nightmarish system
> by abusing the automatic update process (and doing their best to prevent users from keeping it disabled) Microsoft is being hugely irresponsible and endangering the security of users' systems.
Security is concerned with three things: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA). Those initials are used in the first few pages of any introductory security curriculum. You should have learned at least that much in your annual "Computer Security and You" training video.
The unauthorized Win10 installation risks the Integrity of the users' data and its Availability. Because it includes spyware, it definitely damages the Confidentiality. It doesn't just "endanger the security", it absolutely damages the security by damaging confidentiality. It is the OPPOSITE of the goals that security people strive for, the opposite of a security update.
> There's a problem with IT security in general in that those responsible treat security as an end in itself, and never weigh the benefits of their security measures against the potential loss and disruption caused by the "security measures" themselves.
Fuck you for trying to blame this malware on "IT security people". It's precisely the opposite of eveything we do.
what's really amazing is there's this thing called "GOOGLE "with a "white "background and a "search box" apparently when you type stuff in it's magic wow amazing! Type" why you should keep windows up to date and it might tell you it's to keep it safe. Wow.
But no I don't know how to butter my bread so I'll sue the company that's an idea can I borrow your logic it's sounds brilliant! Lol
Trying to roll back the existing non-functional computer computer and get it working right again also has an unknown outcome, involves an unknown amount of downtime, and unknown total cost. Telling her customers "I can take care of you in two hours, after my new computer is set up" is definitely less costly to her business than telling them "I don't know when I'll be able to get back to you. My computer is in the shop. Maybe it'll be fixed today, maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday".
No, she probably clicked the "upgrade later" button because it was the one closer to her intent. Had there been a "I don't want this fucking upgrade" button like Microsoft should have supplied, then there most likely wouldn't have been a lawsuit.
Dipshit fanboi.
Microsoft has begun creating a lot of crappy software. Windows 10 and the Edge browser are two examples. I suspect the company has been putting its new-hires onto the browser and OS teams. Maybe somebody in the know can tell us what product Microsoft is now depending upon for income.
Windows 10 has absolutely no business being characterized as a 'security update,' not only because the scope is way too big for that but because it reduces security!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
as a small business owner myself, I can safely say that if you don't keep up with the changes in the world you will fall behind. Claiming ignorance of what keeps your business afloat is not a reason to sue another company. It was her responsibility to keep her internal infrastructure updated. I know I wouldn't give her company any credit card info after this. Who knows what else she "never heard of", like computer and network security, anti-virus, malware, etc.....
Increase of settlement and admittance of wrongdoing would be adequate for me getting bugged daily on this crap!
...windows 7 made damn sure you were aware of the pending windows 10 upgrade...
Presuming she knew what a "Windows 10" was.
.
She stated she never heard of Windows 10, so even if there were one of Microsoft misleading prompts, if she didn't know what Windows 10 was and just click the "X" to dismiss the dialog box, she would have gotten Windows 10 installed.
Once Microsoft started to use malware tactics to trick customers into installing Windows 10, lawsuits such as this one were the obvious end result.
Excect to see more. (especially since Microsoft didn't appeal because, imo, they had nothing to stand on because of their tactics in this matter)
You, just as Microsoft often does, have give the end user too much credit.
Yup, calling bullshit right there, windows 7 made damn sure you were aware of the pending windows 10 upgrade, so the fact that you are even saying that tells me 100% you clicked install now because you thought you'd get a settlement and you did.
Maybe. Or maybe it happened the way it almost happened to me. One day I was about to shut down my Win7 laptop when I noticed the little yellow flag in the "Shut down" button that means, "I'm going to apply updates that I haven't told you about before I shut down." Since I don't like to apply unknown updates, I aborted the shutdown and looked at the updates (Control Panel | Windows Update). There it was - an unsolicited upgrade to Windows 10. I unchecked the box and changed my update settings to "Let me know when updates are available." If I hadn't noticed that little yellow flag, I would have received an unwanted and potentially disastrous update.
Trying to roll back the existing non-functional computer computer and get it working right again also has an unknown outcome, involves an unknown amount of downtime, and unknown total cost. Telling her customers "I can take care of you in two hours, after my new computer is set up" is definitely less costly to her business than telling them "I don't know when I'll be able to get back to you. My computer is in the shop. Maybe it'll be fixed today, maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday".
Sounds like a pretty good business plan for the manufacturers and Microsoft. Fuck someone's computer up, and if they don't buy a new one, its their own damn fault.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Non-mutual collateral estoppel will now bite Microsoft hard. Because they 1) fully litigated; 2) lost; and dropped the appeal, Microsoft is bound by all the factual findings of the court (and jury). Now *anyone* else can sue and Microsoft cannot (legally is estopped) from arguing against the facts established in the first case.
Having personally witnessed that it is entirely possible to upgrade a windows machine to windows 10 without a single incident, and also entirely possible (and easy) to disable all of the metrics and info that the software wants to send about you, I am thinking that these stories that we hear about Windows 10 and how awful it is are overblown.
It is often the case that we only hear about it when things go wrong, and so it is perhaps that we are led to conclude that this is the general state of affairs, but so few people report when things go right that we cannot make a meaningful and objective evaluation without trying it for ourselves.
Windows 10 is not anywhere nearly as bad as what these stories paint it to be. While it's true that by default it does want to do certain things that no sane person would want in a desktop OS, these things are actually extremely easy to disable... even at installation time, if you decide to not use the express settings.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
But it happened anyway. When will these grinning show offs be introduced to the Criminal Correction System? Of course one does wonder what types of Correction are taught there.
Found him, where do I claim my $100 ?
Oh, and Mr. Shill, NOTHING you say contradicts Ms Goldstein.
Goldstein says her windows 7 computer started upgrading to windows 10 without her consent
You:
windows 7 made damn sure you were aware of the pending windows 10 upgrade
Being "made aware" does NOT mean she gave consent for it to happen.
FFS, just look at the reports of Microsoft's tactics over the last few months to force this on users, pop ups with no obvious opt outs, that decided the act of closing the window meant "yes please". Pop ups that give you the choice of dates to install Win10, but again no way to opt out.
How the fuck is any of this "giving consent" Mr Shill ?
Pobre homem , talvez você deve recorrer à auto masturbação
Someone from microsoft told me they will still continue to push the nagware and in some cases the upgrade. Specifically cases where the updates were never declined. Can anyone shed any light on this?
No one wants your shit Windows 10.
Small claims court is an excellent way of extracting a "Pound of Flesh" without giving a lawyer one damn cent. If more people started doing this, Microsoft would have a real problem on their hands, and would be forced get electronic signatures to a EULA and include Binding Arbitration in that EULA.
Ford execs decided it was cheaper to let people burn, and pay the cost in court, than it was to fix the issue.
The memo cost them a lot of goodwill, but they are still around.
MS is probably looking that memo over right now thinking the same thing.
Cost to pay pissed off citizens is cheaper than fixing Win10, so....
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Microsoft obvious does not understand one extortion invites another. For a company that inflicts the very same on others regularly, its naivete is surprising. The IBM feeds its Nazgûls well for a reason, so soon after failing to learn that very lesson in the SCO affairs is a mistake that reflects poorly on Microsoft management.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Syria for Sirians!
> Seeking compensation for lost wages and the cost of a new computer
And the new computer will come with... Windows 10.
GG
What about the frustration/ damages/ time lost from M.E. constantly updating over dialup... and what was wrong with XP? 2000? NT?
Microsoft needs to die.
Apparently Microsoft need to be reminded yet again that the customer comes first.
> I work in the public sector
Regulations implementing the Computer Security Act of 1987 now require (almost?) all federal employees to receive annual computer security training. I guess you work for a state government rather than federal, unless your agency isn't complying with the law. Or you slept through the training and forgot all about it.
The stories are all Facebook, Twitter, Google, Google, Google, Chrome, Google etc.
Except Windows 10 is not a security update: the computer in question had Windows 7, which is still in extended support and will still get "proper" security updates until 2020.
Yes, Windows 7 will get security updates in the form of patches that correct already known defects. Bandaids, in some sense.
Windows 10 has a list of actual security improvements, not just bandaids. Better ASLR and DEP, better support of harddrive encryption, more secure default browser, and other goodies. Microsoft maintains a page of Windows 10 security improvements over Windows 7/8. In theory, Windows 10's features mean a reduced attack surface. Maybe it still has issues but it is certainly more hardened than Windows 7 in general.
I'm sympathetic to both sides. I don't like things being pushed on people; it's their right to decide what to do with their own property, and maybe they have special needs that require an older version of Windows (some mission-critical software is known to have bugs on 10 for example).
But I also know that Microsoft is trying to improve the security of its products and the Internet as a whole by trying to get everyone updated. They don't want Windows 7 to be a repeat of people clinging to Windows XP, clinging to old technologies that are broken when new tech/implementations are available to prevent security problems. Not just security, but also think features: new protocols might be developed that weren't supported in the old OS, and so until majority of the Internet moves on, that protocol can't be rolled out. Many computer users are pretty clueless and need automatic updates for that reason, or they'll never do it themselves, and bring down the security of the Internet as a whole. Of course, it doesn't help that Microsoft's marketing team wants to take advantage of the security updates by also collecting info and all that stuff.
I hope we can find a good balance between the competing interests soon.
Microsoft denies any wrongdoing, and says they only halted their appeal to avoid the cost of further litigation.
If further litigation was to become that expensive, it's "only" because their case wasn't terribly strong to begin with.
Implied corollary: If continuing to litigate was cost-free in all dimensions, we'd never drop an appeal voluntarily—only that patently isn't true, either, unless "cost free" includes a get-out-of-adverse-precedent free card.
Net translation:
I never wanted Win10, which is clunky and awkward and specializes in making the simplest task an exercise in frustration.
On a very functional six year old dual-core laptop, I modified the registry months ago to stop the Win10 nagware and the auto-update. Then Win 7 Windows Update failed repeatedly, over weeks. It would hang on 'checking for updates.' After spending two days recently renaming files and restarting services and then reinstalling the OS from the recovery partition with no improvement, I gave up. I repartitioned the drive and installed Ubuntu 16 Long Term Support in a dual-boot configuration. The new OS works well and recognized all the hardware, including trackpad and special keyboard keys. I have a functional laptop back under my control and update-able.
It is a reasonable conclusion that MS deliberately broke Windows Update in Win 7 to force people to upgrade to Win10 against their will and against their best interest.
I still have the Win 7 partition ready to boot, if MS ever reconsiders their decision to re-enable Windows Update in Win 7. I won't hold my breath though.
How many customers have the geniuses at MS chased off and secondly, do they care?
If you're lucky to even avoid the windows 10 installation, you won't have a problem. I have a laptop that just started to install windows 10 and I'm just not sure how as I didn't give it the permission to install it and ever since, the configurations have been failing and the laptop has been rendered useless. A lot of college work on that laptop from the last 4 years have been gone. I know I can easily remove the hard drive and use it in a docking station to extract the files no problem but the fact is, some of us wouldn't know that! Also Windows 10 will remove any unlicensed drivers, software, programs etc! it's the purpose of it's "security"
we shouldn't have to go through that. Not everyone does, it's just an unfortunate event!
I like windows 10 as I have computers that came pre-installed with it already (not a problem there)
but there is so much to it that you don't know about.
What happened to the funny and sometimes even insightful slashdot of old? Several hundred comments so far, and the word "liability" does not appear once? Well, I'll spare you the long rant about the devolution of slashdot and just make the obvious comment about how Microsoft works:
MS = innovative financial models, NOT innovative software. GREAT money. Good software? Not so much.
The financial innovation that this article is about involves liability evasion. You youngsters may not believe me, but there used to be times when a company could be held legally liable for egregious mistakes that hurt the customers. Microsoft isn't the only anti-liability innovator, but the EULA was a major breakthrough and completely distorted Microsoft's developmental priorities. Security? Why worry? Whatever goes wrong, Microsoft has NO liability.
Actually, I don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm virtually certain I never read the entire EULA in any of it's cursed incarnations. More power to you if you have, but I have read enough EULA stuff so that I am unable to imagine the grounds of this nuisance lawsuit and amazed that Microsoft was willing to pay any money to make it go away. I hope that the precedent is going to come back and haunt them.
Not betting on it. I am certain that the newest diabolical incarnation of the EULA has several pages of disclaimers covering upgrades, and you retroactively accepted it when your firstborn child got ahold of the software and gnawed a hole in the shrinkwrap with his or her first tooth.
I could mention a few other anti-software-quality innovations that have helped make Microsoft the "success" it supposedly is. There was a time I would even have been motivated by the hope slashdot mattered.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
So was the new computer she got running Windows 10 then?
The upgrade to Windows 10 "does not happen by itself". Something has to be clicked for it to happen.
Perhaps MS needs to add a second level of protection - "Are yu sure you want to upgrade to Windows 10?", and perhaps some sort of imaging/backup before the upgrade occurs"
Are you enjoying all the new features of Win10? The question no one seems to ask is 'why?' Why did you upgrade? What functions were you missing that you now have and are going to use, wondering how you ever got by without them? This is a very real problem in software development, and usually involves feature creep and increasing introduced performance problems. While physical things can wear out, software only wears out when it is intentionally made to wear out. So software vendors come up with new versions that really do nothing to serve the users; the upgrade only serves the vendor. So while I am impressed with your level-mindedness, you still fail because you upgraded unthinkingly, and believe you did a good thing for yourself. You did no such thing. If there is no bug you need fixed, if there is no security issue you are vulnerable to and need patched, if there are no new features you are itching to adopt the use of, if your system works fine for your purposes, then a decision to upgrade is insane, only asking for trouble... even if all goes well. What did you gain? Nothing. Go on, pat yourself on the back again.
Teri Goldstein has spoken out. She says she now has a class action suit underway against Microsoft in the US and Canada. This is likely to be the first of many such cases: "Microsoft needed to be held accountable for its negligence regarding the forced Windows 10 upgrade which rendered many user’s computers useless. Microsoft cannot just say read our User agreement form, we hold no responsibility, you cannot sue us and go away." http://betanews.com/2016/06/27...
You have a point. Certainly many CIOs and also a previous generation of security people have thought of security only in terms of confidentiality. These people have been educated in general IT or computer science, or in some cases have less relevant degrees like electrical engineering, but very rarely do they have a degree in Information Security. So many of them make very bad security decisions, and their decisions focused on confidentiality, which is only one of the three legs of security.
Now companies are STARTING to hire dedicated CSOs and career security people. The first class of information security graduates are getting their degrees right now. These people should understand that availabilty (you can do your work) and integrity (you can trust the results) are just as important. Here's my definition of Information Security, which I think nicely sums up current thinking by this new generation of specialists:
A secure system is one which continues to function correctly, even while under attack.
The comma is important - it suggests that systems which funftion correctly while under attack ALSO function correctly while not under attack. Security implies no blue screen, no error #84c73a2946de93. "A bad guy can't break the system" means that a good guy can't accidentally break it either, the system keeps working correctly for you.
Fuck you Microsoft. Get ready to eat it you piece of shit
Microsoft wants to be the all-powerful monopoly, but doesn't want to answer for damaging anybody else's businesses while doing so!