Today it was announced that Lenovo has reached settlements with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a coalition of thirty-two U.S. states to resolve their concerns related to the third-party “VisualDiscovery” software that Lenovo preinstalled on certain consumer laptop products in late 2014 and early 2015. While Lenovo disagrees with allegations contained in these complaints, we are pleased to bring this matter to a close after 2-1/2 years.
After learning of the issues, in early 2015 Lenovo stopped preloading VisualDiscovery and worked with antivirus software providers to disable and remove this software from existing PCs. (Those instructions can be found on the Lenovo website here.) To date, we are not aware of any actual instances of a third party exploiting the vulnerabilities to gain access to a user’s communications. Subsequent to this incident, Lenovo introduced both a policy to limit the amount of pre-installed software it loads on its PCs, and comprehensive security and privacy review processes, actions which are largely consistent with the actions we agreed to take in the settlements announced today.
Product security, privacy and quality are top priorities at Lenovo. We have a responsibility to deliver products and solutions that maintain the high standards we set for customer experience while also protecting the privacy, integrity, and availability of our customers’ data. For more information on Lenovo’s current and comprehensive approach to product security, please visit the Lenovo Security Vault at: http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/product-security/landing.shtml.
