A great thing about getting a new computer is knowing it’s pristinely free of junk files and PUPs (potentially unwanted programs). Of course, nowadays new computers do come with a lot of “bloatware,”-a tradeoff for a lower price that most of us can tolerate. But, what if a well-known manufacturer sold you a computer with some really nasty malware factory-installed?
That’s exactly what Lenovo did to its customers from September of 2014 until January of this year as the company decided to include SuperFish adware on some of its notebooks. Ostensibly, SuperFish was supposed to “improve the user experience.” To Lenovo, that meant when someone conducted a search on Google, Amazon or other websites, SuperFish would insert its own shopping recommendations into the results. It was worse than that though. In order to hijack the user’s search, SuperFish had to defeat the computer’s browser security. Doing so left Lenovo notebooks vulnerable to hackers on a Wi-Fi network. Passwords, bank credentials … and everything else on your computer would be at risk.
The fact is, Lenovo actually knew about this problem before installing SuperFish, and they asked the adware maker to fix it. Unfortunately, SuperFish didn’t comply and Lenovo didn’t bother to check again. Not surprisingly, lawsuits are already in the works. In the meantime, a number of anti-virus software companies including Windows Defender have stepped up to uninstall SuperFish. Fortunately, the adware program was confined to Lenovo notebooks, but if you think your computer might have SuperFish, check out this article.
Lenovo isn’t a fly-by-night computer maker. In fact, since taking over IBM’s PC market share in 2006, most consumers would see Lenovo as name brand on par with HP or Dell. So what did the company have to gain from so badly betraying its customers? It’s all so far from ‘The SynchroNet Way’ that we have a hard time wrapping our minds around it.
Trust that we have no ‘deals’ with hardware or software vendors that could ever entice us to recommend or sell any solution that we don’t believe to be in the unqualified best interest of our customers. Better than that, when we source hardware for you, we also image it ourselves. That means WE install the operation system, the applications you need, and get it ready for you. We don’t need to tell you that our image does not include garbage like SuperFish (but we’re happy to tell you anyway). We put you first. That’s just basic to a proper client-business relationship … and nothing else is acceptable.
