6 ms·
Seems like a small fine, compared to the potential financial benefit of that installation. Hopefully it serves as a deterrent for future adware installs. If n
by mogadsheu 8y ago
Seems like a small fine, compared to the potential financial benefit of that installation. Hopefully it serves as a deterrent for future adware installs. If not, maybe we start calling our lawmakers.
For those of you in the adware space, would you pay >$10 per head to install your adware onto a computer? My guess is absolutely.
- sokoloff 8y agoAmazon gives you a $20 discount to take ads on Kindle purchases. The possibility of having to pay $10 only if caught and fined seems like not at all a deterrent.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoAmazon ads are usually for things Amazon sells... Windows sorta advertises too... Products Microsoft sells too
- paulie_a 8y agoI don't agree with it but cross promotion of products a company sells is at least a little more reasonable.
- mogadsheu 8y agoAgreed it’s tiny.. hopefully this fine implies that future infractions may carry much more serious penalties
- dmd 8y agoThis fine implies to me that future infractions will not be taken seriously, just as this one wasn't.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y agoThe article mentions another $7M worth of fines, and that's just for the US. Also, they sold their customers pretty cheap, so the combined fines likely significantly exceed the profit from the deal: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/02/27/lenovo-got-very-little-from-superfish-deal/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/02/27/lenov... While I do think the punishment should be significantly more severe (including jail time for executives), I suspect the scandal has made companies aware that this is a bad idea. I still don't get why it didn't hurt them more in the enterprise space (read: why large companies didn't institute a strict "no lenovo" policy for a couple years). That would have been way more effective than fines.
- jldugger 8y ago> I still don't get why it didn't hurt them more in the enterprise space (read: why large companies didn't institute a strict "no lenovo" policy for a couple years). That would have been way more effective than fines. Using vendor OS images is a rookie mistake in the first place.
- na85 8y agoWasn't their shitty bios rewriting parts of windows? Vanilla OS images won't save you there.
- opencl 8y agoYes, Windows has a feature called Microsoft Windows Platform Binary Table that allows the OEM to embed any executable file they want into the UEFI image which is then automatically run on every boot. Extremely terrifying backdoor mechanism.
- Spivak 8y agoNot half as scary as Apple's DEP program. Pretty much everyone is moving this way because it's super convenient for admins -- devices arrive out of the box working and configured. Google has "Zero Touch", Samsung as their Knox program.
- pknomad 8y agoI don’t understand about your point about Apple DEP. could you clarify? It’s predominantly used on company-owned laptops and requires an Apple company account or developer license to work. I haven’t seen it used for consumer computers.
- LiterallyDoge 8y agoApple seems interested in keeping things fairly secure, is this a theoretical fear or an exploit I've never heard of?
- moscovium 8y agoI read the headline thinking it was a purchasing deal, not a fine...
- throwaway932 8y agoSmall? It's negligible, and acts like the opposite of a deterrent: it's an implicit authorization.