Some very troubling news has surfaced and this could potentially affect a lot of people who use and own HP PCs. Allegedly, the company has been stealthily installing system-slowing spyware on their PCs.
Really though?
Lenovo already faced backlash for preinstalling adware on their computers and settled to pay a $3.5 million fine. The popular computer company apparently told Lenovo to hold their beer cause they’re gonna upstage them with their recent move.
According to reports on Computer World, the “spyware” in question is called “HP Touchpoint Analytics Service” which appears to have taken place of the self-managed HP Touchpoint manager solution. Here is officially what it’s supposed to do:
From helping you enforce a mobile security policy to wiping a device, HP Touchpoint Manager features the tools you need to ensure all your managed devices’ security—and brings you greater peace of mind.
But according to complaints on HP’s support site, this is what is happening when it’s installed on your computer:
On 11/18/2017 Hp Touchpoint Analytics Client was installed on my computer without my consent. I’m assuming it was installed in the background as an update to Hp support or framework. However it happened I don’t appreciate it’s sneaky take over of my computer’s system resources. From yesterday to today it’s been making my computer work so hard I can hear it like cranking away and the light in the back of my computer is flashing rapidly in-tune with the cranking. In Task Manager I can see it starting and stopping numerous applications, it’s client service and installer, console window host, command prompts, timeout-pause command prompt, it’s causing a lot of up and down use of antimalware service executable and local system.
There is no clear indication on how or when the spyware is being installed but it sounds like a nuisance and outright intrusive. As an owner of an HP laptop myself, this is just troubling to hear that the company would even do such a thing without informing PC owners. Now don’t worry there is an easy fix for the problem and it can be removed from your PC in minutes.
The company has yet to release an official statement on the secretly installed driver. They seriously have some explaining to do on this one.
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Photo: HP
