Technology

59708 readers

1864 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

712

Microsoft's official "Bing Wallpaper app" does some nasty, malware-like things to Windows (www.techspot.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

99 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The app automatically installs Bing Visual Search and includes code to decrypt cookies saved in other browsers, Rivera said, and it also brings a "free" geolocation web API to the system.

The developer discovered "many" nasty tricks Microsoft integrated in Bing Wallpapers, which include trying to change the browser's settings and set Edge as the default system browser. If the default browser isn't Edge, the app will open the default browser after some time asking to enable the previously installed Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome extension.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sorghum 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Should be opt in to begin with

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

A lot of it pops up and asks, but it's inside a barrage of questions that requires users to actually pay attention at a point when they're just trying to get into their computer