Lenovo installing adware on consumer machines

Formatting your harddrive seems like the best thing to do when you bought a new Lenovo laptop.

For me personally, I thought the T450s was going to be my next laptop but will be looking at other alternatives.

Source: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo...e-spam-Superfish-powerd-by/m-p/1863174#M79882
Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072424

 

just really low move, I know margins are thin but that's just really underhanded.

 

Adware is nothing new, that's why I never buy consumer laptops. Even if I do first thing I do is a system wipe.

But a MITM attack by default? THAT is low.

 

The T450s isn't affected.

 

Yes, I know, I'm just not going to buy it as a matter of principle.

 

Idiots. F'in idiots
They are going to get destroyed over this and rightfully so. Maybe they will learn and take the proactive step to remove all bloatware on computers going forward. But I doubt it.
Hope that tiny bit of incremental revenue from Superfish is worth all the lost sales and completely tarnished brand image guys! Good job!

 

I still plan to get a Lenovo, but with the cheapest drive. I plan to put my own SSD in, as well as RAM.

 

You might want to check for adware/spyware: http://www.redmondpie.com/lenovo-caught-shipping-computers-pre-installed-with-adware/

Extra read: http://winbeta.org/news/lenovo-chooses-ad-revenue-over-customer-security-preloading-adware-updated-response-lenovo

 

I doubt its malice, but rather incompetence. Hopefully lessons will be learned/any people responsible fired, because its turned into a public relations disaster.

 

This one from BBC

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31533028

 

chinese companies are very shady, there is a reason why the U.S. govt moved from lenovo.

 

Superfish, the one who wrote this crap, is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA with an office in Israel.

 

The Level of butthurt is usually quite high directly after such an incidence. I'd give it a few weeks and hardly anyone will care anymore. Lenovo was swift to solve the problem (according to their official statement) and this will merely remain a blow to their image. Hardly a reason to start #boycottlenovo. (I'm pointing at you Matt Cutts). Especially since ThinkPads aren't affected.

But that's just my opinion.

 

Right, but that piece of software hasn't installed itself on Lenovo's machines on its own, has it now?

 

Well I'm not arguing Lenovo is in the clear or if they are completely innocent, since they are the one with the stupid press release to argue it was safe and because customer wants it.
Just saying the "because they are Chinese they are shady" bit is a tad bit ridiculous.

 

Well...I do agree with you in principle.

With that being said, this latest debacle will refresh the Net memory of the times when numerous government agencies worldwide decided to drop ThinkPads as a hot potato...

 

for one, the u.s. moving away from lenovo happened months ago, secondly a large amount of shares of lenovo are owned through the chinese government

 

Awesome fail, they put in a support article few hours ago

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish

Looks like it took months on lenovo forum + whoever initiate the report to blow it up this big. Another fail for lenovo to take this up so slow and un-professionally, they should had find way to shut the press up, they got like what? a whole month?

I guess they never think it would even get blown up. shame on lenovo PR (again), I remember their pr had an epic fail in the recent years iirc (something about their CEO said something stupid?).

Now, it is all over the web in one day.

Anyways, anyone know who first put this up officially? they must hate lenovo.

 

Well, between the wifi driver issues and little quirks that I've seen (both at home and at work), and this, I sure won't be buying any more Lenovos. And it looks like my boss isn't about to buy any either (which easily amounts to hundreds of lost sales considering the amount of machines we have at work). What a shame that they did this.