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

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] RmDebArc_5 18 points 4 days ago (6 children)

[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

I’m not a windows fan boy, in fact I haven’t used one in years, and have no intentions to.

But this is a weird way of thinking about MS shenanigans.

Hate it or like it, windows update is still an update to your system, to fix security vulnerabilities even. I wish they had implemented it in a user friendly way. But it is NOT a thing that disrupts you with ill intent as you mentioned here.
That is a task manager running some process. But no indication on what the process is !
Enabled by default is an horrible design decision no matter who does it. I agree on that. But this is NOT unauthorised access. You signed up for it when you decided to use windows.

Again I don’t like MS. Hate them for their bad decisions, but don’t hate them by misrepresenting them.

(My comment is only about this screenshot posted here)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The good thing is you can disable most of their telemetry crap if you know what you are doing.

[–] sorghum 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Should be opt in to begin with

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 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

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