HP Quietly Installs System-Slowing Spyware On Its PCs, Users Say (computerworld.com)

It hasn't been long since Lenovo settled a massive $3.5 million fine for preinstalling adware on laptops without users' consent, and it appears HP is on to the same route already. According to numerous reports gathered by news outlet Computer World, the brand is deploying a telemetry client on customer computers without asking permission. The software, called "HP Touchpoint Analytics Service", appears to replace the self-managed HP Touchpoint Manager solution. To make matter worse, the suite seems to be slowing down PCs, users say. From the report: Dubbed "HP Touchpoint Analytics Service," HP says it "harvests telemetry information that is used by HP Touchpoint's analytical services." Apparently, it's HP Touchpoint Analytics Client version 4.0.2.1435. There are dozens of reports of this new, ahem, service scattered all over the internet. According to Gunter Born, reports of the infection go all the way back to Nov. 15, when poster MML on BleepingComputer said: "After the latest batch of Windows updates, about a half hour after installing the last, I noticed that this had been installed on my computer because it showed up in the notes of my Kaspersky, and that it opened the Windows Dump File verifier and ran a disk check and battery test." According to Gartner, HP was the largest PC vendor in the quarter that ended in September this year.

Comments

Well duh

[Revek]

It doesn't matter if its spying or not most 'value added' crap, computer manufacturers installs slows the computer. Rarely do they add to the performance of the PC. Hp printer installers are the worst for installing garbage you don't need.

Re:Well duh

[sexconker]

custom install ==> drivers only is how you avoid the shitware with hp printers and imaging products.

Wrong!

1: Right click, extract to HPShittyDriver/ (you do have 7-Zip installed, right Hoss?)
2: Dig into HPShittyDriver/ and find the driver inf files and install them (alternatively, let the Windows driver installer noodle around in it for you and pick whatever it thinks is best)

If you can't right click, extract it you can double click to run it, step through the installer just to the point before it does shit, then head on over to the temp files directory in Windows Explorer (use Resource Monitor to track where it dumps them if you can't find it) and find all the extracted files there. Then do step 2 above.

Another alternative is just to use whatever drivers Windows Update throws at you. You may not get the shitty "Send a Fax from your Fridge to your Light Bulbs, with Alexa" feature, unfortunately.

Re:Vendor Crapware Replaces Itself With Crapware

[rudy_wayne]

Lenovo settled a massive $3.5 million fine

This is why this sort of thing keeps happening. Massive? Not even close.

Last year, Lenovo's revenue averaged out to $4.9 Million USD PER HOUR. Congraulations, you fined Lenovo less that what they make in one hour.

Re:wipe windows off

[grumpy-cowboy]

Linux Mint. I used it on many computers without any problem. Running now on my Dell Precision m4800 (docking station connected to a LG 34" Ultrawide)) and Asus Zenbook 13". Everything is working fine.

I bought my Dell Precision in october 2014 (i7-4940MX, 32GB RAM, SSD, 1TB HDD, ...) and it's running like a brand new computer. It's fast, responsive, ... I'm a software engineer and I'm running a lot of stuff on it : VM, Dockers, Java development, ... I'll never get this performance with Windows installed on it. Not on a 3 years old laptop.