Chinese leading technical company, Lenovo has introduced the spying software on its laptops. Most of the laptops are provided in the market with some other smart phones with the pre-installed certain default software from the start. There are some of the essential and the useless crapware is installed there for some corporate or financial reasons.
Lenovo started using this technique to spy on the users for their financial gain.
Hidden Lenovo Spyware Program
The writer at ComputerWorld bought the ThinkPad, which is the flagship laptop lineup of Lenovo this year and he started to go through the work of scheduler database. He also found a task, which is called Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64 of Lenovo and it is running on the daily basis. He searched the files in its folder of task and they pointed out to Omniture on online marketing and web analytics firm.
He also said that he did not sign any agreement with Lenovo to give them the authority to use data from his PC when he set up his PC and he also did not notify any software. He also managed to reveal the documents, which show the data, which was taken as ‘non-personal and non identifying information’. The technical company, Lenovo issued the official statement in which they claimed that they collect the non personal information and non identifiable statistical data, which is not tracked to any customer or device.
The company has provided the poor track record to ensure the privacy of their customers and it was hard for them to trust on it. It is said that it was not the first time, when Lenovo was caught spying his own users. Lenovo is the largest PC maker around the world and it did this work and this is the third time, it was caught spying his users.
The Superfish Scandal
Lenovo loaded the adware software, which was called ‘Superfish’ in early 2015 on their laptops and they gave this software this name when the advertising company has made it and it was used to alter the search work on the web browser to show in the various ads, which the users see.
It was the fact that the software, Superfish was hugely flawed and it really messed up for Lenovo. The critical user data was exposed in which passwords, emails, banking transactions and instant messages for the attackers are included. This was known as the man-in-the-middle attack and hackers can use this flaw to do spy work on the internet traffic of their users and infiltrate the computers.
BIOS Rootkit
In the same year, another scandal of Superfish was arisen in the headlines and Lenovo was caught in the similar case. The Chinese company used the Windows features, which are hidden and they installed the unwanted and un-removable rootkit software on different Lenovo laptop and desktop systems, which were sold.
Lenovo has developed their system, ‘Lenovo Service Engine’ which was the piece of code and it was inserted in the firmware. This is provided in the laptop to ensure that user cannot uninstall the already installed Lenovo software. As and when the users install the Windows or remove it from the laptop temporarily, LSE would automatically reinstall or download the software of Lenovo during the booting time of the Windows. It can also survive the full system wipe and reinstall.
How to remove Lenovo Spyware?
It is not hard to remove this software from the laptop of Lenovo unlike the software like Superfish and Rootkit. It will take some time and you should install it once again if you want to ensure your privacy.
- Download TaskSchedulerView (32-bit or 64-bit, depending on your computer)
- Search Lenovo computer for Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64.
- Disable Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64 daily task from running.
- Rename Lenovo folder to anything else in “C:\Program Files (x86)\Lenovo”
What Can Consumers Do Against this Breach of Privacy?
When you understand it then you can find that the consumers have the power to ensure that the highly technical company does not get involved in the petty works like privacy of their users. It is needed to change the behavior of Lenovo, when we find the products of this company. Until the company does not change its behavior and abandon its anti-privacy practice, the users will not have confidence over it and it can disturb their business.
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