Originally Posted by stormkeep
Where I came from sneaking means you are trying to avoid detection. If they were trying to avoid detection they wouldn't say right in the details what it does and how to remove it. Call it underhanded if you want, but "Sneaky" it wasn't.
And btw, yes, I consider it foolish to have completely "automatic updates" for anything other than AV/Anti-spyware foolish. Windows Update has a very nice tool that tells you what is available and lets you first read the details, and then choose what to update. It's the smart thing to do so that if something DOES go wrong you actually know what the heck recently changed.
The simple fact is that a person's PC is NOT going to have anything they don't want installed onto it unless they CHOOSE to do so. Choosing to let MS automatically install what they want by having auto-update on is user choice, plain and simple. And there's no one the user can blame but themself, imho. MS doesn't do stealth auto-updates. The updates are documented and users only get them automatically if they have chosen to do so. Yet you think the blame should fall more on the company than on the users who told them "go ahead and put what you want on my machine"? That's the problem with society today, no one wants to be accountable for their own choices.
|
It's a question of trust. And despite the geek-factor on the internet, there are still a lot of people who haven't been swimming in MS Hate. I don't care for Microsoft myself, so don't get me wrong. But accusing people of stupidity (while some it may be true of, not all) and conflating that with trust or naivete is just wrong.
And yes, I do believe it falls more on the company. Absolutely. Do you check the contents of gasoline before you fill your tank? Do you inspect the restaurant kitchen before you eat? Most users of PCs are no different than that. If someone spits in your chicken soup, do you blame yourself for not having a chemical testing kit before you eat, or do you blame the restaurant?