Disgruntled Lenovo customers unhappy at the way it covertly installed the Superfish adware onto their computers are ready to drag the firm to court as part of a class action suit.
A proposed suit was filed at the end of last week against both Lenovo and Superfish with the two accused of "fraudulent" business practices and of opening Lenovo PCs up to malicious attacks and malware by preloading the adware.
One of the plaintiffs in the case is Jessica Bennett who claims her laptop was damaged as a result of the adware (called "spyware" in her document) before accusing Lenovo and Superfish of an invasion of privacy as well as making money off her browsing habits.
Bennett noticed the problem on her Yoga 2 laptop and when writing blog posts for a client she saw that "spam advertisements involving scantily clad women" appeared and after research she realised it was part of a wider problem on Lenovo systems.
When did it start?
Lenovo has been using the adware to hijack browsers and insert third-party ads into Google searches for some time with customers reporting the problem as far back as September before it mushroomed with everything culminating in last week's revelation.
The US government also issued a warning last week and it's still not known how many Lenovo laptops containing the software remain on the market or whether the US claim that it was on systems that were on sale as far back as 2010 is true.
Via: PC World