Lenovo Promises Tool to Remove Annoying Superfish Adware From Computers With Help of McAfee, Microsoft
Lenovo is promising to help customers remove the adware program Superfish Visual Discovery from their PCs.
ComputerWorld reports Lenovo came under harsh criticism for pre-installing an adware program on new PCs purchased by consumers. Eventually Superfirsh was discovered to be a big security threat for consumers, and now Lenovo is scrambling to get it off all their machines.
The companyis collboarting with McAfee and Windows to find a way to completely scrub the adware from consumers' PCs.
"We are working with McAfee and Microsoft to have the Superfish software and certificate quarantined or removed using their industry-leading tools and technologies," Lenovo said in a statement. "These actions have already started and will automatically fix the vulnerability even for users who are not currently aware of the problem."
Lenovo is guilty of pre-loading programs onto PCs when customers purchase them. These programs are often trial programs that encourage the user to sign up after the trial is over. If the customer signs up, Lenovo gets a cut of the profit.
Security experts are warning companies like Lenovo to stop pre-loading these programs.
Superfish injected ads into Google searches and other websites. Further, Superfish was able to spy on a user's web browsing habits by tracking them. That left users of Lenovo PCs vulnerable to hacks.
Lenovo claims it did not know about the security risk involved with Superfish.
Ken Westin, a security analyst at security firm Tripwire, said that Lenovo's adding of Superfish to its PCs is a "betrayal of trust."
"When they pull this kind of stuff, I know I don't want to buy a Lenovo," Westin said.
Web browsers Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are all working to find a way to revoke Superfish from their web searches.
A cleaning tool to supposedly uninstall Superfish has been posted on Lenovo's website.
Subscribe to Latin Post!
Sign up for our free newsletter for the Latest coverage!
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of latinpost.com