Computer
maker Lenovo has been shipping laptops pre-packaged with malware that
makes you more vulnerable to hackers - all for the sake of serving you
advertisements.
Made
by a company called Superfish, the software is essentially an
Internet browser add-on that injects ads onto websites you visit.
Besides
taking up space in your Lenovo computer, the add-on is also dangerous
because it undermines basic computer security protocols.
That’s
because it tampers with a widely used system of official website
certificates. That makes it hard for your computer to recognize a fake
bank website, for instance.
Customers started spotting this on their Lenovo computers in mid 2014.
After facing a fierce backlash by customers and computer security experts this week, Lenovo acknowledged that "user
feedback was not positive." As of January, Lenovo has stopped pre-loading the software
on new computers, a company spokesman said. Lenovo also
promised it "will not pre-load this software in the future" and said it
disabled the feature on its servers, which essentially kills the program
on everyone’s computer.
Source: Yahoo Tech
