Reply to post: Re: Thanks for spamming me Microsoft

Windows 10 upgrade ADWARE forces its way on to Windows 7 and 8.1

fung0

Re: Thanks for spamming me Microsoft

Nigel, I agree absolutely that truly vital updates should never be confused with other junk, such as advertising.

However, I disagree with your point about auto-updates. Most of these scare-mongering vulnerabilities are not that likely to bite you in a week. If you're behind a decent firewall, have scripts turned off in your browser, and avoid opening unknown email attachments, you're already 99.9% safe. That other 0.1% can be deferred.

The downside of auto-updates is exactly what we're seeing in this thread. You've given an outside agent, with a very poor record of trustworthiness, blanket permission to do anything it likes to your system. If that's not the definition of a security vulnerability, I don't know what is.

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