The Superfish debacle was rather short-lived. Thanks to swift efforts from both Lenovo and Microsoft, Superfish was all but destroyed, although it was pre-installed on Lenovo PC’s starting September 2014 so the amount of damage done from that point till the reports emerged is unknown. But one thing’s for certain, it tainted Lenovo’s brand, and we all know what that can do to a product.
Just to recap, following the reports, Lenovo announced that Superfish has been disabled server-side and released an auto-removal tool to help cleanly uninstall the malicious application. Microsoft then decided to take matters into its own hands by updating Windows Defender to stop any of the apps’ malicious activity in its tracks.
Now, in an attempt to repair the damage done to its name, Lenovo has announced its plans to completely eliminate adware and bloatware from its PC’s by the time Windows 10 ships. The PC maker will do this by “significantly reducing preloaded applications”. With a single goal in mind of providing cleaner and safer PC’s, “starting immediately”, Lenovo will ship its computers with a clean install of Windows, hardware-specific drivers, security software, and unique Lenovo applications only.
“This should eliminate what our industry calls “adware” and “bloatware”… We view these actions as a starting point. We believe that these steps will make our technology better, safer and more secure.” – Lenovo
Lenovo will also be publishing information on every last one of pre-installed software so that its customers know exactly what each application does. The hardware-maker will also listen to user feedback from customers and enterprise partners to further enhance the user experience.
While Lenovo certainly won’t be shipping PC’s of Microsoft Signature caliber, and the “security software” will likely still be trials that will expire and start bugging users to pay up, this does sound like a good start as no potentially threatening third-party applications other than the anti-virus software will be preloaded.
Further reading: Lenovo, Microsoft, Superfish, Windows 10
