Lenovo Pre-Installs Adware on PCs
If you've recently bought a Lenovo laptop, you might have noticed that your search results, even on Google, are spammed with sponsored links. So, it looks like computers from this manufacturer are infected with factory-installed adware. The reports upon the matter are dated last September, as we can see on the official Lenovo forums.
The trouble grew larger when Mike Shaver, a Facebook engineer, discovered that Superfish, the program behind the issue, installs a certificate that permits outside parties to 'have a look' at the secure websites you visit too.
Lenovo admitted that Superfish was installed on its machines, but that it would be “temporarily removed” till an update to solve the problem is released. On the forum, Superfish is described as “<...> a technology that helps users find and discover products visually. The technology instantly analyzes images on the web and presents identical and similar product offers that may have lower prices, helping users search for images without knowing exactly what an item is called or how to describe it in a typical text-based search engine. <...>”
Even though Lenovo is not the first one to pre-install various software, providing distribution of potential malware is pretty odd: there are antivirus reports classifying Superfish as malware and subject to removal. Remember that you have an option of not accepting the terms of use of the program on the first run. In this case it will be disabled.
