Hacker News Reader

Comment by dathery | Hacker News Reader

> In July this year, the channel flagged that some LG monitors were automatically installing an app that collected device data and ran pop-up ads for LG’s other apps and even McAfee antivirus. The public pressure from that video prompted an intervention from Microsoft, and ultimately led to LG disabling the pop-up ads.

Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible? I had to fight against Windows installing Alienware command center nonsense automatically because I have a "gaming" Dell OLED. Windows automatically fetched and installed it just from plugging in the monitor, adding a new system tray icon and persistent daemon with these kinds of annoying pop-ups and probably a bunch of security vulnerabilities.

It's completely incomprehensible to me. The monitor works great without it, on both Windows and Linux! I left a negative review on an otherwise good monitor as a result, but Microsoft shouldn't even be entertaining this crap.

View on HN

> Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible?

Because, as much as we nerds might hate it, it's convenient to a large number of people. They plug in their device and the companion software to fully use all its features just installs itself. They don't have to go to some obscure URL and then locate their exact product. Even in the case you've described, the software likely enables some features of your monitor that aren't accessible otherwise. You don't care about them, but someone might.

But it should require asking the user if the installation is acceptable.

"But that would confuse users with a complicated interface"

- some product manager, who was thinking of additional ad revenue while trying to sound like not an asshole.

Have you asked "a large number of people" or are you projecting your fantasies?

The intention is to allow for automatic installation of software that is actually needed for the function of the peripheral - think proprietary cameras or non-standard printers/IO/etc. It's not a bad goal, but it leads to manufacturers abusing it, unsurprisingly, for things that are not, in fact, necessary.

The question is specifically for monitors, for which this would have to be implemented separately because the discovery is different. At most a monitor should be associated with an automatic ICC profile.

this feature probably began life as "automatically download necessary drivers to make installation easier" and then after some massaging the definition of "necessary drivers" expanded to "anything the manufacturer would like to see running on this PC regardless of how necessary it is for the device to function".

Windows downloads the driver first, then the driver itself uses an AddSoftware directive to install a companion app. Which is ok when the app is a GPU control panel or similar, but here it was clearly abused.

When your job performance is tied to the number of new users you get onboard...

I largely don't use Windows anymore, but there is an option buried under Advanced System Settings/Properties under the hardware tab called Device Installation Settings. There you can turn this off (marked 'not recommended').

I know about this because I have a Windows 10 VM that was automatically installing an old broken Radeon driver through it that would just leave me with a black screen on boot. I also learned that if Microsoft got the scent of the driver and started downloading it turning this option off didn't stop that particular driver from continuing to download and hosing the install. Since I lacked a snapshot before this I had to reinstall the the entire OS in the VM with the GPU not passed through and then turn the option off first.

I hope I can soon get fable or the like to execute

"Please scan my computer for spyware, and if found, either remove it or find an exploit to permanently cripple the spying part of it"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com