Lenovo will stop preloading Superfish adware on their computers

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Lenovo found itself in a bit of hot water when some customers started noticing weird sponsored links in the search results on their brand new PCs.

The culprit it turns out was a little piece of adware called Superfish the company was shipping on laptops.

The company listened to customer complaints and turned off the server-side portion of the app in January. It also stopped pre-installing Superfish on new machines around the same time.

While Lenovo said originally that it had "temporarily removed" the software from new machines while its developers worked on an update to address concerns, it now says that it will not preload the software ever again.
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Source : http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/19/lenovo-stop-preloading-superfish/

All I can say is that I'm extremely happy I've never bought a Lenovo product and will most probably not buy one until the day I die.
 
My company uses lenovo globally, and I'm typing this post on a lenovo laptop. No superfish on here, but then I guess we use our own windows installations and not the ones that come with the laptop.
 
Pox said:
No superfish on here, but then I guess we use our own windows installations and not the ones that come with the laptop.
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Yup, only way to ensure it's gone.

Very unethical to keep quiet about it, but for the Chinese that is normal.
 
Samsung sticking adds on their tv's Lenovo spamming searches, this is pathetic.
 
And some people think I am nuts going with a non-smart TV and separate multi-purpose box which I have full software control of.
 
I feel bad for Lenovo, they had no idea this was going to happen and no idea what SuperFish was actually doing in the background. The bloatware stuff is pretty much only there to offset the Windows licensing fees.
 
CataclysmZA said:
I feel bad for Lenovo, they had no idea this was going to happen and no idea what SuperFish was actually doing in the background. The bloatware stuff is pretty much only there to offset the Windows licensing fees.
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Lenovo senior executives approved it.
 
kingrob said:
Lenovo senior executives approved it.
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That's true, but according to what they've revealed now, they didn't know that Superfish was going to inject malicious adverts into user's browsers. They're going to get burned for Superfish's **** adware and it only strengthens the case for OEMs to have Microsoft drop Windows licensing fees enough so that they don't have to do this. Its either that, or Microsoft mandates that every notebook, desktop and tablet sold come with a clean install and zero bloatware.
 
CataclysmZA said:
That's true, but according to what they've revealed now, they didn't know that Superfish was going to inject malicious adverts into user's browsers.
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Um....no. They knew all along and now playing dumb, cos they will be losing customers by the thousands in the near future.

Nobody likes to be spied on when buying a product which carries your whole life on it, e.g. pictures, videos, music, etc.

Lenovo screwed themselves big time.
 
kingrob said:
They knew all along and now playing dumb, cos they will be losing customers by the thousands in the near future.
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Well honestly, we don't know if that's the case. The people put in charge of figuring out which partners they'll sign up for pre-loading apps onto notebooks are not technicians themselves - they are sales execs or what Dell sometimes terms "configuration managers" (IIRC that was one of the terms used) who know the financial details of the deals they're doing for the preloaded stuff, but none of the technical background behind it. I doubt anyone knew that Superfish would later inject adverts into HTTPS sessions. I don't think anyone realised they were generating their own certificates for the websites users were visiting. At some point it must have been mentioned that they would be data harvesting sites that people visit, but they would share the proceeds with Lenovo. Money talks.

Assuming that the people responsible for putting these deals into effect know how the software works is clutching at straws, at best. There are accountants who work at Fortune 500 companies who won't be able to tell you how your browser fetches websites for you, or how DNS works. Assuming malice on Lenovo's part without having all the information on the table is dangerous, because now Joe Public rallies against them for this, and blames them for this and everything else that's going wrong in the industry, like a lightning rod for their anger.
 
Well these days you pretty much have to nuke any new pc you buy anyway. They all come with crap pre installed.

Id rather buy a dell than a lenovo anyway though
 
I expected more drama over this Superfish tbh. Like a billion dollar fine and public apologies etc.
 
So install Ad Aware and let it clean that crap up, easy.


But for me, any new Laptops me/my family receive it gets formatted OOTB.
 
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