>>>The most recent example: I am looking for a new laptop, my old HP is dying a slow death, presently in a coma, the video chip needs a "reflow" (i.e. heating up until the soldering points melt and hopefully catch again). I was looking at a Toshiba, and then discovered they are advertising it with two new important features: simplified login and extended MRU list. The first one is explained as the camera doing a face recognition, CSI style, and the other as tracking every file I opened in the last three months. Huh? The camera is turned on without my permission? There's a logger that tracks whatever I'm doing? I don't want a machine which will spy on me, I want a simple damn laptop. Toshiba is blacklisted now, for getting the idea in the first place and then even doing it.
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>>All consumer laptops come with crapware, no matter what you buy you'll have to uninstall it, then check all your MSConfig startup items, services etc.
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>>If that isn't worth your time then get a retail copy of Win7, wipe your new laptop and reinstall from scratch. Or, if you don't trust what it comes with.
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>Amazingly, there are a lot of good laptops sold here without OS or with Linux installed, which is my laptop OS anyway.
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>>Electrical tape, with or without a folding flap works great on laptop cameras. Some makers are starting to install lens covers e.g.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5988&review=asus+n53jf>
>>Blacklisting a manufacturer based on crapware installed on a particular model is dumb.
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>It's called voting with your wallet.
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>And the two pieces I mention are not crapware, they are spyware.
Hi Dragan! :)
My recent laptop purchase includes a facial recognition software to use as a biometric security device. There are fingerprint scanners on many laptops. The software on them activates them when it's possible you might want to log in with your finger. There is a plugin which does it for the browsers and the scanner goes active when the machine waits for me to log in. Is the camera doing something more? If not, I can't see it as spyware per se. If the data was being uploaded somehow, maybe then it's spyware?
