Lenovo finally gets punished for its Superfish AdWare controversy

[AlTech]

A few years ago, Lenovo dumped an Adware known as "Superfish" on users of Lenovo laptops.

Well now, Lenovo is getting fined $3.5 million USD for the Superfish Adware controversy.

 

 

Quote

Lenovo has agreed to a settlement as part of its Superfish adware controversy that first came to light in early 2015. At the time, Lenovo was found to have preinstalled a piece of adware developed by a firm known as Superfish on hundreds of thousands of laptops without its customers' knowledge. After some legal wrangling with the Federal Trade Commission and a 32-state coalition, Lenovo has agreed to $3.5 million in fines and additional stipulations (via Engadget).

The Superfish adware, known as VisualDiscovery, worked by inserting third-party advertisements into Google search results and other websites via a "man-in-the-middle" technique. The adware posed a number of security risks and was able to access potentially sensitive user information like social security numbers, payment information, and login credentials. While it doesn't appear, according to the FTC's statement, that this more sensitive information was transmitted to Superfish's servers, it still put customers at risk should the software have been compromised.

 

This is what the FTC had to say regarding the Superfish case:

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As part of the settlement with the FTC, Lenovo is prohibited from misrepresenting any features of software preloaded on laptops that will inject advertising into consumers' Internet browsing sessions or transmit sensitive consumer information to third parties. The company must also get consumers' affirmative consent before pre-installing this type of software. In addition, the company is required for 20 years to implement a comprehensive software security program for most consumer software preloaded on its laptops. The security program will also be subject to third-party audits

 

I'm really glad that Lenovo have finally been punished for Superfish. Granted, $3.5 Million is nothing to the company that owns the ThinkPad brands. But it's better than nothing.

 

Source:

https://www.windowscentral.com/lenovo-agrees-35-million-settlement-over-superfish-adware-controversy

[Hiitchy]

I guess someone in their software development team missed the seminar where they discussed what adware is and how it affects a user's experience... But then again, I'm glad Lenovo was punished for such... silly actions.

[RuLeZ]

3.5 Million dollars is nothing to Lenovo

[TidaLWaveZ]

52 minutes ago, RuLeZ said:

3.5 Million dollars is nothing to Lenovo

Guarantee Superfish paid Lenovo more than 3.5 million to do it in the first place.

[mr moose]

It's the audit part that I like.   Nothing like having all your software scrutinized for 20 years.

[captain cactus]

$3.5M?

 

[normpearii]

Now, they only need to move the decimal point 3 places to the right and then you'd have a real fine.

[GER_T4IGA]

This is like Taylor Swift sueing for $1. This has only symbolic value and it makes me sad that companies can fuck over their non tech savy consumers so badly and get away with it.