Lenovo Software Update Stealthily Installs Adware

An anonymous reader writes "A recent Lenovo automatic software update has the great feature of displaying annoying pop-up ads for Lenovo products. What's worse, it appears that many users are unable to turn the advertisement 'feature' off, subjecting them to pop-ups every couple of hours. Gee guys, a note about your 20% off sale in my e-mail wouldn't have bothered me that much, but you really had to pop up over top of my PowerPoint slides? I'm sure that all of my office colleagues will be running to order ThinkPads ..."

this is dumb

[moderatorrater]

This is the reason that I build my own computers whenever possible - the manufacturers install crap upon crap on your box. This is just taking it to the next level.

I wonder what it would cost to build computers without the annoying shit installed. Is that all that's making them profitable?

Re:Wait...

[TommydCat]

Funny, but this is a serious credibility whack as their products are considered top notch for business. They'll find out when they interfere with business being done, it's a long fall down...
Somehow I think someone in management is busy whacking the undo button as furiously as possible as the media exposure rises.

Two problems, hard to say which more serious

[SuperKendall]

From reading the discussion forums, there are two problems:

1) System is not obeying checkbox to not show specific message again.

2) System is presenting ads through software installed by the vendor, not by email or browser.

At first #1 seems to be the bigger problem, as if you could check a box not to see the message again you'll only be bothered once... until you read the bit about "specific" again. Checking that box by design is supposed to only block that EXACT ad, not others that may come later...

That was indeed an insane choice to include by a vendor. As noted, these could pop up at the most inconvenient time. Even if you dismiss one and it worked, you never know when you may get another.

I'm sure they'll get rid of this soon, but it has to go down in history as one of the bigger WTF moments in vendor specific software installs.

Obligatory Snark

[ewhac]

This issue only affects Windows users.

Its over

[spire3661]

Thats it folks, thinkpads are officially dethroned as the king of business laptops.

Re:this is dumb

[fafaforza]

Wow, look at that. No TrackPoint? Check. Build aesthetics that make my phat NintendoDS look slim and elegant? Check. Right.

Re:Just wait, it'll get even better

[jolyonr]

What makes you think they haven't already?

What would make it even better...

[roc97007]

The only thing that would make this better is if Lenovo sold ad space. Imagine explaining the pr0n popups during your next big presentation. This seems so inevitable that I'm astonished that they haven't already done it.

Re:Obligatory Snark

[Anonymous Coward]

Which means it affects all users with paying jobs...

So you guys living in your parents' basement are safe...

LENOVO!!

[Icegryphon]

What are you doing?! You are ruining BigBlue's legacy.
You should be the best of the best for business.
Stop adding all this extra Adware, crap software on new systems
I am ashamed to be a IBM fan right now.. Ashamed.

Re:Lenovo has officially jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst we're doing anecdotes, my Lenovo X301 running Kubuntu 9.10 is the best laptop ever, period. Even better, when 4GB and 8GB DDR3 SODIMMs become available, I can have 8 or 16GB of RAM in this thing. Running Virtualbox I can sync with my iPod etc and it is like I'm using a native Windows machine.

Of course, I blew away the default Windows Vista Business install and all the crappy apps that came with it..

Re:What the hell were they thinking?

[greg1104]

The worst virus/malware cleanup I've done in the last year installed itself via an Acrobat reader security vulnerability. "Don't update Acrobat" isn't really a viable solution to their bloat problem because of that class of issue. More useful ones are "Install Foxit Reader" and "Use Evince on Linux".

it got me too

[chasmosis]

I had this exact thing start happening earlier this week. I googled it and used the instructions to disable the Lenovo Message Center Plus. This is my work Laptop. I openned a ticket and tried to explain to them what it was but no they had to treat my like a newbie and scan my harddrive for malware (like I hadn't already thought of that), I know its SOP but I already told them what it was. The biggest reason for openning a Ticket was so they would know about it when somebody else here (all laptops are lenovo) gets the same thing.

Its convenient enough for me that it made Slashdot's front page so I can send this link to them.

SEE!!!

Re:this is dumb

[Tubal-Cain]

No TrackPoint?

Laptops still have those?

Build aesthetics that make my phat NintendoDS look slim and elegant?

Not all of us care how our machine actually looks.

Re:Wait...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unless Toshiba's build quality has improved markedly in the past couple of years, I'd urgently advise not going down that road. We had 30-odd Toshiba tablets in service here, and they were hell. Shoddy build quality, horrendous shovelware, near-worthless driver download site. Our experience with both Dell and HP has been markedly better.

Re:Just wait, it'll get even better

[TrentTheThief]

Yeah. I know I got down voted for mentioning "red chinese," but that the way it is. When you lose control of your nation's manufacturing capability you'd better hope there is never another world war.

The primary reason that the allies won WWII, besides the obvious efforts of all involved, was the US's incredible manufacturing capability.

That won't happen next time. We have little heavy industrial manufacturing left, and less technology producing companies than we started with.