One thing really bothers me about the discovery that Lenovo preloaded several of its laptops with Superfish, a nasty piece of adware that not only injects ads into search results, but also compromises your browser's security to the point that hackers have a wide-open door to your computer. While writing about it at Liberal America yesterday, I discovered that according to Forbes, complaints abounded about Superfish's products as early as 2010. And yet, Lenovo crawled into bed with this company anyway.
In one Apple Mac forum started in 2012 and continuing into the following year was full of complaints about a technology called Window Shopper, built by Superfish. It appears to have found its way onto people’s machines by being bundled with other software, in one case alongside an Oracle Java download, in another via an “Awesome Screenshot” extension. Indeed, most members of that forum had no idea just how the Superfish software had wormed its way onto their machines before irritating them with ads as they hovered over content. And a few had some trouble locating Window Shopper to uninstall it. Microsoft Windows users were experiencing similar pain back in 2011. As were Mozilla Firefox fans in 2010. The list could go on.
I initially described Lenovo's dealings with Superfish as betrayal of one of the most sacred trusts in computing--that a manufacturer will put compromised machines on the market. But as I've chewed on it, I'm wondering if it goes beyond that. You mean to tell me that no one at Lenovo took the time to check this company out, see if there were any serious complaints about its software, before cutting this deal?
I'm starting to wonder if this rises to the level of blatant disregard for customer safety. Many longtime Kossacks know that I've come to believe that when a company acts with this kind of disregard for its employees or customers, it should be driven out of existence. That's what happened to Peanut Corporation of America and to Massey Energy, and that's what should have happened to Chase in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal. I'm beginning to wonder if Lenovo should get the same treatment.