Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/cand/284981/1-0.html

by jayess • 11 years ago

579 229 11 years ago

belorn4• 11 years ago

Going through the list of complaints, it really sound as it should have been a criminal procedure, not civil. One then wonder why that isn't the case here.

michaelhoffman• 11 years ago

In the U.S., private prosecutions are not usually allowed. Additionally, government officials with prosecutorial authority have some amount of discretion in choosing which cases to prosecute and limited resources that prevent them from prosecuting every possible case. A private citizen cannot force prosecution, no matter how meritorious the case.

mfisher874• 11 years ago

This is true, but one still wonders why government officials haven't pursued a criminal case.

neurotech12• 11 years ago

US Judges in civil cases can be obligated for the court to be informed that a crime has been committed, which is then referred to the prosecuting authority. The prosecuting authority still has discretion and is not forced to prosecute the matter.

I found a reference to a case in Utah. http://e-discoveryteam.com/2011/04/10/judge-refers-defendant...

cmattoon2• 11 years ago

With the amount of frivolous cases brought under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (http://www.networkworld.com/article/2908555/opensource-subne...), it'd be nice to see some charges filed for this.

cmattoon2• 11 years ago

Oh, look, another one: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2484018,00.asp

a3n4• 11 years ago

It would seem to be a violation of the DMCA, as it is software preinstalled to allow the eventual side-stepping of the end-user's security measures (using an HTTPS-capable browser).

"It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

EDIT: Considering the huge number of victims systematically targeted on an ongoing basis, perhaps RICO would apply too. Certainly RICO is brought to bear by prosecutors when trying to intimidate less resourced individuals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corru...

seanp2k24• 11 years ago

It would make my day to see companies (or the individuals who called for this retarded project) get punished under DMCA / RICO / CFAA. I bet we'd see those repealed real quick due to lobbying pressure if that kind of thing actually worked.

rhino3695• 11 years ago

Does superfish circumvent copyright media protection? Not really. It's a huge stretch to call https a form of drm.

bhartzer• 11 years ago

Just bought a Lenovo laptop over the weekend for my wife. Sounds to me like it's no longer being installed on the laptops, but will check it to make sure Superfish isn't there.

stanmancan2• 11 years ago

I'd format it with a fresh version of whatever OS came on it just to be safe. I actually have always done this when buying pre-built computers just to get rid of all the junk that comes from the manufacturer.

rplnt3• 11 years ago

I wish we had this option for mobile (android) phones which are preloaded with crapware (oftentimes permanently) even more than PCs are.

fullwedgewhale• 11 years ago

Excellent suggestion. I highly second that. Yes, even though more and more vendors are making that harder. For example, claiming that reinstalling the OS voids your warranty.

gesman• 11 years ago

It's challenging due to multitude of vendor/model specific device drivers that are also required to computer to operate (mouse, network, wifi, usb, etc...).

Plus you need to have a separate OS license as well to make it work.

rogerbinns• 11 years ago

I have been Lenovo faithful for many years, although I mainly run Linux and keep a small Windows partition. I strongly recommend you reinstall Windows. Thankfully the regular Windows 7 (and presumably later) disks/USB images from Microsoft work.

The software you will want from Lenovo is their System Updater which can be installed on a fresh (non-Lenovo) Windows install, and will let you install drivers and similar software (nothing is forced, all up to you).

The one thing you won't be able to install the various pieces of crapware, but that is a benefit.

tomtoise• 11 years ago

Windows now treats it as malware. Probably has something to do with it.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/20/8077033/superfish-fix-micr...

rshaban2• 11 years ago

"Notably, Lenovo did not preinstall the Superfish program on any of its computer models that were marketed to businesses or more sophisticated computer users."

That's a particularly damning accusation.

davis_m• 11 years ago

Not necessarily. Many of the higher end and business models come without spyware of any kind, not just this particular piece of software.

danielweber2• 11 years ago

Yes, when a major company orders 3000+ laptops, they say exactly what they want on them, and that's what they get.

bhauer• 11 years ago

Not necessarily. Many of the higher end and business models come without spyware of any kind, not just this particular piece of software.

I like that you said spyware, whether intentionally or not.

Most people call these programs "crapware," "junkware," "bloatware," or third-party pre-installed software. Though generally speaking this third-party junkware isn't expressly designed to be spyware. Nevertheless, with cases like Superfish, the line between spyware and junkware is vanishingly faint.

piyush_soni2• 11 years ago

I'm wondering how'd they figure out if a user (not business) is a 'more sophisticated' computer user.

bpicolo• 11 years ago

"models that were marketed to..."

CervezaPorFavor• 11 years ago

My guess is that just refers to higher end models.

superuser22• 11 years ago

Easy: whether they are buying ThinkPad (business/power user) or IdeaPad (someone who could just as easily have bought a Dell Inspiron).

hatmatrix• 11 years ago

But Superfish was directed to consumers with the intent of personalisation, which is generally not in line with business users (though in practice, many people use business machines to do their personal shopping).

jakewalker• 11 years ago

There were a number of lawsuits that were filed against Lenovo as a result of Superfish. I believe the Joint Panel For Multidistrict Litigation will soon (May 28) hear argument about whether and where those cases should be consolidated for pre-trial matters. See: http://www.jpml.uscourts.gov/sites/jpml/files/Hearing%20Orde...

rshaban2• 11 years ago

I'm pretty curious about who this "Sterling International Consulting Group" suing Lenovo is, their website (http://www.sterling-consulting.com/) 404s...

stanmancan2• 11 years ago

Link works fine for me. "Your source of Microsoft expertise and specialists in Sharepoint"

verytrivial• 11 years ago

Works for me too, but I wish it didn't after having that lady walk on the bottom right every time I click a link.

kabdib2• 11 years ago

SharePoint. That explains everrrrything.

mfisher874• 11 years ago

404 is probably for the best. It's one of those sites that immediately starts playing loud video when you open it.

EDIT: omg, it's a unicorn of bad web design. The video loads on every page of this website.

arenaninja2• 11 years ago

EDIT: omg, it's a unicorn of bad web design. The video loads on every page of this website.

I've explained time and time again why this is a bad idea, but some people really want their video on every page..

lessthunk• 11 years ago

.. reinstall any computer you get from scratch; Firmware Bios spying is of course much harder to get rid from.

rubbingalcohol• 11 years ago

Many of these computers don't even come with OS reinstallation media. They tend to have recovery partitions on the hard drives which will only restore the computer to its initial spyware-ridden state.

I downvoted your comment because of your implication that spyware wouldn't be a problem if only everyone were as sophisticated as you.

abandonliberty• 11 years ago

You're setting a good standard for downvote etiquette. It's kind to not leave people guessing and I think it strengthens our community.

mikeash6• 11 years ago

I don't think the comment implies any such thing. Suggesting mitigations for the current state of things doesn't in any way imply acceptance of the current state. At most, it implies resignation.

tokenizerrr4• 11 years ago

You can just reacquire the installation media from elsewhere and reuse the serial key.

yesplorer• 11 years ago

I was reading HN on mobile but decided to pull my laptop over and upvote you (then comment; can't comment on mobile app) not because I agree with you or agree/disagree with parent comment but because you were highly civilized with your comment and your downvote.

You made a counterpoint, you didn't insult (the use of the word 'nonsense' is really common on HN counterpoints), you downvoted, then you explained your reason for the downvote. In all this now flame-wars were set.

I hope a lot of us will follow your path and make HN pleasant for everyone.

Thank you.

woodchuck64• 11 years ago

Upvoted since reinstalling is a valuable skill to learn and cultivate.

gambiting• 11 years ago

You know, my father used to love motorbikes when he was young. Since he lived in a communist state(Poland) all he could get were Soviet-made motorcycles, which, as brilliant as they were, had a tendency to die suddenly after ~1000km even if bought a new one. But my dad let me in on a secret - he said that even if you bought, you had to take it completely apart, including the engine, re-lubricate everything, replace seals with a different type, put it all together and then you got yourself a best bike in the world - it wouldn't fall apart from few thousand km, it would serve you for years. He also used to believe that the ability to take apart and assemble a motorcycle is a good thing to learn.

Me? I believe it's great that I live in a free country where I can buy a new motorcycle and not have to take it apart to make it safe to use, or consider engine-building skill to be essential.

And as much as I enjoy working with software, I don't think reinstalling windows just to avoid spyware should be considered essential, or that regular people should have to know how to do it. For your regular Mr or Mrs Smith reinstalling is not a valuable skill - computers are tools which should just work.

rip747• 11 years ago

as much as this is a good idea, remember that most people who buy a laptop just want to take it home and have it work. Add to that point that reinstalling from scratch typically involves finding all the drivers all over again and spending hours running through all the windows updates. This is something that most people DO NOT want to go through or have the knowledge to do so.

tokenizerrr4• 11 years ago

Are drivers really such a problem still with windows? The past few laptops I've reinstalled worked out of the box with a fresh install. If not, it automatically got the drivers from windows update.

zamalek• 11 years ago

At this point I wouldn't put BIOS/NIC spying past Lenovo. They've sternly defended their bad decision and continue to pre-install Superfish.

I used to think RMS was paranoid with his fully open source stack, Lenovo has me questioning that belief.

pekk5• 11 years ago

No more than any other vendor. They apologized about Superfish, not that it matters because such apologies are free. Superfish was pretty stupid, but I wouldn't use the preinstalled OS on any laptop anyway just for reasons like this which are NOT specific to Lenovo

wehadfun• 11 years ago

Suprise that no market their computers as "crapware free".

greenjellybean• 11 years ago

I don't buy Apple computers but isn't that a main selling point with osx?

rdsnsca• 11 years ago

It is one of the selling points. It has been over 5 years since Apple has sold a computer with any third party software on it.

NelsonMinar• 11 years ago

Depends on whether you consider iTunes crapware :-)

danielweber2• 11 years ago

Microsoft Store.

nfoz• 11 years ago

You used to be able to pay $50 extra on Sony laptops for it to come clean.

While that's technically better than no option at all, it doesn't make me miss them too much.

a3n4• 11 years ago

You also used to be able to buy a Sharpie marker at the same time as a CD purchase to defeat their rootkit installed from music CDs. I don't miss them too much either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

acdha3• 11 years ago

Microsoft's trying to create a premium “Signature Edition” category with that as the selling point:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...

kabdib2• 11 years ago

I've bought a couple of these. They're sure nicer than the crapware-ridden vanilla consumer machines (where it takes me an hour or two to remove the crapware . . . and even then I'm not sure).

abetaha• 11 years ago

Thanks for the link, I did not know that cleaner/pristine Windows install are available out of the box. Out of curiosity, if these laptops are the same price as the one laden with "crapware", why are'nt consumers buying these instead? Is it awareness that they are available?

Animats• 11 years ago

That's funny. Take a look at that link. Microsoft, itself, is talking about how crappy their own product is in its normally delivered form.

Silhouette• 11 years ago

Thanks for sharing. I hadn't seen that before.

Apparently they do still include Windows Defender, which is described as "free anti-virus protection that never expires". Although it's a Microsoft product, I would place it close to third party junkware on the scale: in my experience, it often turns out to be the culprit if performance degrades over time, every now and then an update will completely break a box requiring some sort of restore disc or similar to get back up and running, and in any case it seems to add little value being so much less effective these days than a lot of other security software. At least it probably uninstalls cleanly if you do want to swap it out, though.

I found this an interesting, if somewhat inflammatory, criticism of the same Windows Signature programme:

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/mic...

Sadly, the UK version of the Microsoft Store seems to have a very limited range of devices available on the same basis.

Jun8• 11 years ago

I don't think one should be surprised. At least two reasons can be given:

1) "crapware" is not well-defined for all users, some utility that absolutely is annoying and unnecessary to medium to advanced users may be found useful by complete novices, e.g. the prototypical "your grandma".

2) The bigger cause is, of course, affiliate money. Companies have little backlash to crapware other than perhaps some lost sales due to disgruntled users. That's hard to quantify. The money you get from an affiliate whose crapware you preinstall is absolutely easy to quantify, though. This is definitely the mode of operation for cell phone companies. My Verizon phone comes with NFL apps and other crap that I can't even uninstall.

3) In lost cases, though, it's the companies own additional software that is the crapware. Again, the cause is money, the tracking and/or usage data is worth a lot of money.

Unless there is a big punishment, large enough to really hurt these huge companies, the status quo will continue. That's why this particular lawsuit is so important.

mikeash6• 11 years ago

Regarding (1), has any computer manufacturer ever installed anything we might call "crapware" that anyone ever found to actually be useful? Not something that grandma thinks is useful, but something that is actually useful to grandma (not quite the same thing!).

The rest is totally right, though. For any behavior by a company that seems to do more harm than good, you can usually trace it back to some decision-maker who is rewarded for the good parts but is not responsible for the bad parts. If your decisions cause $1 in gain for your department and $2 in loss for another department, many companies aren't smart enough to do anything but reward you and punish the other department.

zurn• 11 years ago

Microsoft uses licensing discounts to bribe PC manufacturers into force-bundling Windows in jurisdictions with weak consumer protection laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows#...

karmakaze• 11 years ago

Though never conscious to me before, Macs are crapware free. I wonder how more often PCs would 'just work' if it only came with the OS and core drivers.

patcheudor• 11 years ago

"Additionally, the large security hole created by the Superfish program can easily be breached, because the security key for the single self-signed root certificate used by the Superfish program has been broken and published on the internet. It took one computer security researcher less than 15 seconds on-line to obtain the security key for the Superfish root certificate."

It's interesting that they are sticking to the original narrative when the situation was actually far worse as I originally disclosed here on HN & which was later written about by Filippo Valsorda on his blog.

Original discovery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9078536

Filippo's blog post: https://blog.filippo.io/komodia-superfish-ssl-validation-is-...

kazinator2• 11 years ago

The allegations here are of a criminal nature. If true, people need to go to jail here, in addition to any civil remedies arising out of the class action suit.

tgbrter• 11 years ago

Is it possible that the "cyber" laws are designed to be effective towards individuals.

pavel_lishin• 11 years ago

But corporations are individuals! Could two wrongs make a right?

rebootthesystem• 11 years ago

Rule #1 of buying any pre-packged Windows computer: Clean install the OS from original MS disks, not from what might come with the computer. If you are running a business the cost is insignificant when compared with the aggravation and risk of crapware. This is also the reason we still build our own desktop computers: You know exactly what's in them, you can service them and generally get more performance and quality per dollar spent.

seanp2k24• 11 years ago

It's also amusing to me how many of the people who do this will install Windows from a "cracked" distro, as that is now more secure than what most manufacturers provide out-of-the-box. Sad when random ISO from public torrent tracker is more trustworthy than Official Disk Image from publicly-traded corporation.

TeMPOraL• 11 years ago

It's the same as with anti-piracy warnings and ads you can't skip on original movies. The pirates don't have financial incentives to milk you, and they have all the incentives to get the best version working as soon as possible. So that's why you often get better stuff from them than you can buy.

bradleyjg3• 11 years ago

A year or eighteen months from now look for a settlement in the case. Each of the affected class members will be entitled to a $5 discount on an anti-virus product plus up to $25 if they can provide detailed documentation showing actual economic losses. Any money left over after the coupons and payments are made will be given to a charity hand picked by the plaintiff's attorney. There will also be injunctive relief in the form of Lenovo promising never to do it again, seriously this time guys. The representative plaintiffs will each be awarded $5,000. The class attorneys will be awarded $4 million. $750,000 will be set aside to pay a class action settlement processing company which will put up a website, send out notices, and process claims.

After a pro-forma hearing a judge will approve the settlement as fair, reasonable, and adequate.

chime• 11 years ago

And through all of this, the Lenovo name will continue to be tarnished. That's where the real damage is.

mhurron2• 11 years ago

In 18 months no one will remember this. Honestly, corporations face basically no repercussions from customers because of doing stupid or outright malicious things.

Kurtz79• 11 years ago

Law triumphs again! (as in "Lawyers")

Still, it's better for this to be in the open, with all the bad PR associated to it, so that companies will think about it twice before pulling similar stunts in the future.

pbhjpbhj2• 11 years ago

so that companies will think about it twice before pulling similar stunts in the future //

Is that how it will pan out though. I'd imagine it's more likely to be that Lenovo get away with paying a little of their profits out in the class action but still overall profit from the whole deal. Then companies will be encouraged to do so long as when they factor in the cost of the lawsuit they still come out on top.

IMO penalties should be such that a company doing this sort of thing makes no profit and is at a very real risk of having to be liquidated if they already weren't making a profit. For large companies the payout should be measured in $100 millions as that's the only sort of level of fine that will be noticed.

Directors in charge of that section that authorised or actioned the activity should be barred from being directors again and where appropriate face criminal charges. In Lenovos case if they can ever afford to do this again and if the controlling elements (or those who should have exercised control according to the org chart) aren't prosecuted under eg CFAA then the punishment will be too small.

cynoclast• 11 years ago

The only people who win class action lawsuits are lawyers.

lamuerteflaca• 11 years ago

Not true. The customer will see the company getting punished which is worth a lot more. They will think twice about doing something idiotic next time. This is what I call using your lawyer powers for good (and profit).

rayiner2• 11 years ago

Probably, although I'll note that cy pres awards are under intense scrutiny these days in the various Courts of Appeal. Besides that, is the result unfair here? Did the average claimant even suffer $5 in economic losses?

mikeash6• 11 years ago

Shouldn't the potential risk be taken into account as well? They basically disabled HTTPS for a large number of people for a significant amount of time, leaving them open to great financial risk due to compromised bank accounts and such. That roughly nobody took advantage doesn't change the fact that the risk was there.

I mean, if I fired a gun at your house but was lucky enough not to injure anybody, shouldn't my punishment still be more than the cost of fixing the bullet holes? Of course that's separate from the question of whether you should receive more than the cost of fixing the bullet holes.

bradleyjg3• 11 years ago

I know that outright cy pres settlements are on the outs, but are residual cy pres clauses also under the same scrutiny? If so, change that clause to the company keeps whatever is left in the compensation pool.

As for unfairness, I think the entrepreneurial class action system to punish very diffuse harms amounts to an inefficient regulatory regime and that inefficiency results in higher prices for everyone as compared to a more efficient system.

superuser22• 11 years ago

Yes. People spent $700 on what were supposed to be their own computers, following their own wills. In fact they got computers which ignore their instructions (i.e. to fetch a webpage) and instead fetch the modified version that Lenovo's partners want them to see. The computers are not their own, they are Lenovo's. Full refunds are in order.

belorn4• 11 years ago

There is several different economic losses to calculate here, each surpassing $5.

There is the cost of removing the malware, and cleaning up any damages it caused. This is normally done by estimating how many hours a professional would spend on it, and the wages they would demand.

Second, is the for-profit claim of "TRESPASS TO CHATTELS". If someone goes and steal a car to run a taxi service, one would look at the ill-gotten gains as well as the potential economic loss the car owner might has sustained from not having access to the car. "borrowing" other peoples cars once the owner has parked it is not risk free, and the law recognize this beyond just looking at used up gasoline.

btilly5• 11 years ago

This is true, but do you know why it happens?

The US has a protection against double jeopardy. If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing. In most cases this is a good thing. It means that once the case is done, it is really done.

But companies have learned how to take advantage of it. If they think they are going to have to fight a class action lawsuit that they are likely to lose, THE COMPANY will go to some lawyers, and say, "If you bring this lawsuit against us, we will cooperate fully, cave in quickly, and we'll settle on modest terms."

Said lawyers have every incentive to cooperate. It is easy money, and the more reliable they are about following through, the more of this kind of work they can get.

And companies have every incentive to do this. Because occasionally class action lawsuits happen that the company did not set up like this. That's when you get huge claims like the ones that took down big tobacco, or the hot coffee lawsuit that McDonalds faced a few years back.

smeyer• 11 years ago

If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again)

Double jeopardy doesn't prevent someone from opting out of a class action lawsuit and suing separately.

hot coffee lawsuit

The hot coffee case wasn't a class action lawsuit.

neurotech12• 11 years ago

They can be sued multiple times for multiple instances of the same injury type. This has been known to happen involving ADA accommodation & injury lawsuits where a state contracted provider doesn't learn their lesson the first time. The original lawsuit specifies plaintiffs, injury and covered time period, and usually requests an injunction to "prevent" future injury. The original lawsuit is settled, but the provider fails to take reasonable action, and so a new lawsuit is filed. The second lawsuit is usually not settled on "modest terms".

The "hot coffee" lawsuit was well justified, as the burns were serious and McDonalds did not learn from previous instances.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer etc. please ask your lawyer for legal advice.

dean• 11 years ago

THE COMPANY will go to some lawyers, and say, "If you bring this lawsuit against us, we will cooperate fully, cave in quickly, and we'll settle on modest terms

Hmm. I wonder if the law firm bringing the case, specified in the docket as PRITZKER LEVINE LLP, has any history of doing this.

appleflaxen2• 11 years ago

Double jeopardy is a criminal law concept, and this is an issue for civil court.

It only applies to the extent that individuals at Lenovo receive criminal charges. Then they are only on trial once.

But if they harmed 10 people the same way, then all ten people can absolutely sue to cover the damages they sustained.

rosser2• 11 years ago

Anyone who trots out Liebeck v. McDonald's as an example of a "bad" lawsuit is just demonstrating that they're operating from a position based more on opinion than fact.

Liebeck sued McDonald's for actual costs of her medical treatment. McDonald's refused to pay for her injuries or admit fault. The jury awarded the massive punitive damages ($160,000 in actual damages and $2.7M in punitive) of their own volition, because the company's behavior was so egregious, was just one incident in an ongoing chain of similar ones (and for which they'd settled previous claims), and was obviously responsible for the third degree burns she suffered beneath her clothing.

Please check your facts next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

DannyBee• 11 years ago

"This is true, but do you know why it happens? " Because class actions were not created as vehicles for consumer action, but for efficient justice. They are a judicially created way of doing things to make 20-30 lawsuits involving the same thing, sane. That's it.

Even the main justice who created them "could not conceive of a modern function or a coherent theory for representative litigation."

Even then, rule 48 was opt-in until 1966, when a federal court rule change (IE not a law, just the court rules made up by a few federal judges) changed to make them opt-out.

This is what sprung up the industry you see today.

The rest of what you describe is simply a symptom of not building a coherent platform for mass-action, but instead a way to simplify lawsuits that involved 40 or so people.

LordKano• 11 years ago

If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing.

If you do the same thing multiple times, you can be sued for each instance.

If you run a scam that affects a million people, you can face a million separate lawsuits.

bonyt• 11 years ago

That's not double jeopardy - double jeopardy is a criminal law concept, and we're talking about civil lawsuits.

You can be sued for the same act by multiple people, though you can't be sued BY THE SAME PARTY for that same act multiple times under a doctrine called res judicata.

You can usually opt out of a class action, and then sue again on your own - and you're entitled to your day in court to assert the claim against them. Though, since most people don't opt out, a class action does provide a way to settle the case with the vast majority of potential claimants.

If the defendant LOST the earlier case, they may even be precluded from re-litigating any issues resolved in it (and, by extension, prevented from defending themselves substantively). Though in some situations, like if it were easy for the claimant to join the earlier lawsuit, this may not be so. See Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322 (1979).

jcromartie• 11 years ago

Indeed. This needs to be illegal, not inconvenient.

guelo• 11 years ago

Yes the attorneys will get most of the money but it's still A Good Thing™ because Lenovo will pay millions in punitive fees that should serve as a deterrent to them and others.

downandout• 11 years ago

The class attorneys will be awarded $4 million

I think you are drastically underestimating this. $4M likely won't cover the bill for making copies of the discovery. Firms in similarly underwhelming class action cases have received $50M-$100M.

rhino3695• 11 years ago

I wonder how the good the CFAA case will be.

The software was pre-installed on the machines. I guess it probably depends on what the user terms were for it. The statue requires "without authorization."

I'm surprised there isn't a negligence or products liability claim in here. Because one of the biggest problems, isn't' that they MTTM attacked HTTPS to inject ads, but they did it in a way that was recklessly insecure.

Tharkun• 11 years ago

Can we also get a class action lawsuit started for their insistence on making keyboards WORSE with every new product release?

paul_langston• 11 years ago

Laywers in a class-action should have to accept the same currency in the claim as their "clients"--they get a pile of discount vouchers instead of a pile of cash.

api• 11 years ago

Now can someone please do the same for Oracle and ask.com toolbar?

superfished3• 11 years ago

I purchased a Lenovo laptop in December, and it was one of the ones with SuperFish. They refused to give me a refund, because it was outside of their 30 day refund policy. It would be impossible to get a refund for SuperFish because the info came out in February and they were only infecting systems between September and December.

However, there is a happy ending to this story. I went through my credit card company to get a refund, and it was taken care of no problem. The CC company was incredibly responsive and shocked about SuperFish.

I'm quite pleased, as SuperFish aside, this is the worst computer I've ever owned (Y50 UHD.)

walterbell5• 11 years ago

You filed a chargeback against Lenovo and kept the laptop, or returned it? Was the laptop purchased from a dealer or direct?

superfished3• 11 years ago

It was purchased directly from Lenovo with a Mastercard. I purchased the laptop in early December, though they did not deliver until after Christmas (first strike against Lenovo on this laptop.)

The chargeback just went through successfully on Friday. I have not heard anything from Lenovo yet regarding returning the laptop. I can keep you updated on this if you like.

The woman at MasterCard was very helpful and knowledgeable. She was surprised about SuperFish, but seemed to understand it. I use the laptop professionally and do systems work, so I explained how I basically could not use the laptop for work and had to spend time double-checking some of the work I had already done for clients.

There are also annoying hardware issues with this laptop, various intermittent problems causing crashes. I didn't get into that though, and just stuck with the Lenovo omitting fraud / laptop unusable for work narrative.

I always heard good things about Lenovo, but the late delivery, SuperFish, and hardware issues are enough to make me avoid the company like the plague.

Double_Cast• 11 years ago

I found this article surprisingly clear. I expected to find an unreadable morass of legalese. Is the ill reputation towards legalese unjustified, or is the clarity of this article uncommon?

Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

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