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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.
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...
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.
What does one have to do with the other? If [cost of litigation] + [probabilit of losing] * $10.000 is greater than $10,000 then you obviously just pay the $10,000. Other than the case where $10,000 will bankrupt the company (in which case litigate since who cares about another debtor) the valuation of the company is irrelevant.
Of course there's also the "how many other people will try this" factor but again losing an appeal increases that risk so keeping on going isn't necessarily the best choice there either.
There's a huge difference though between providing a security update when an obscure bug, buffer overflow, or some other specific vulnerability is fixed, and an entire OS upgrade is relentlessly, essentially forced on the user.
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 you've demonstrated the issue right there by conflating "updates" and "security updates".
Last time I looked, although XP may be risky, using a properly patched Win 7 or 8 isn't a significant security risk, whereas installing any significant OS upgrade without proper testing, planning and backup is an unacceptable risk for people using their system for anything more serious than Minesweeper. Automatic updates should be reserved for urgent security updates of the "imminent remote pwnage" kind - anything less should be advisory & accompanied by warnings to back up and schedule the update for a 'quiet' time.
So, yeah, 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.
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. I'm not saying people should be complacent - just prioritize a bit.
(Plus, I really wish I could explain to the IT people at my employer why they shouldn't make their warning emails about phishing attacks look exactly like the sort of phishing attacks that they are warning against...)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Except this woman won her lawsuit. Microsoft dropped their appeal. The precedent has been set. You might need to prove exactly what the forced Windows 10 "upgrade" cost you, but you can cite this case along with your proof. (BTW, you can't just "quit" a lawsuit if you are the defendant, but you could try to arrange a settlement to avoid setting legal precedent.)
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you still think its a campus...
It's a freaking space relay when finished it will fire a beam of energy into space to carry Jobs essence back to his homeworld.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
ms has fucked up it
Truer words were never spoken.
More likely large corporations will just have their tame legislators change the laws so that people don't dare bring such suits.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
imagibe some company
It's easy if you try
My ism, it's full of beliefs.