Lenovo's Chief Technology Officer Discusses the Superfish Adware Fiasco

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20 points·flippyhead··5 comments

I'm still surprised anyone at any time thought Superfish was a good idea or something that customers would want. This was very obviously adware from the beginning and you can't tell me that not a single person raised any concerns about it inside the company.

Also,

> Q: I have to press you on that. What did the opt-in prose look like? Nobody recalls anything about this being opt-in.

> A: I don’t have it in front of me, but I will get it to you.

I would sincerely like to see that, because I've set up multiple Lenovo systems and I have never been given the opportunity to opt in to or out of any preloaded software.

> A. When you buy a Lenovo machine and turn it on, this was one of the programs that was presented to you. At that point, you could click a button that says, “I don’t want to use this.”

That is the very definition of opt-OUT. He directly claims that user intervention was necessary or the adware would be installed by default.

Surely Lenovo made money from superfish installs?

Such as a referral code on the alternate item purchase links etc.

I'm a little surprised they didn't throw their CTO under the bus.

Then Lenovo would admit that they have seriously messed up. Now they are still trying to act as nothing serious happened, only small misunderstanding. "SSL certificate" doesn't tell much to a wider audience. I had difficulties explaining why this Lenovo malware is dangerous to my sister, who is quite smart overall. What most people get by reading articles on this topic is "Lenovo inserts ads", which is not that much of a concern for most users that are used to it anyway.

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