Lenovo Works on ‘Cleaner PC Image’ After Superfish Uproar

empire331/iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — With some consumers still reeling from the revelation that Lenovo pre-loaded an adware program called Superfish on their laptops, the Chinese company is working to regain customers’ trust by promising a “cleaner PC image.”

Lenovo has apologized and said it removed Superfish, a visual shopping tool, in January from devices it planned to ship. The reported issue with the program came to light after users said antivirus protection systems had deemed it a “potentially unwanted program.”

In an open letter to customers, Peter Hortensius, chief technology officer at Lenovo, made it clear that the Chinese computer maker was taking steps to ensure a similar issue would never happen again.

“We recognize that all Lenovo customers may have an interest in where we are and what is next,” Horensius wrote. “The fact is our reputation touches all of these areas, and all of our customers. Now, we are determined to make this situation better, deliver safer and more secure products and help our industry address — and prevent — the kind of vulnerabilities that were exposed in the last week.”

That includes what Hortensius called a “cleaner PC image” that makes it clear what operating system and software are on a device as soon as the consumer takes it out of the box.

The Chinese electronics company said last week that Superfish “has completely disabled server side interactions” on existing devices. Lenovo provided a manual fix last Thursday to remove Superfish and followed it up on Friday with an automated removal tool.

Perhaps most troubling is the allegation that the software can present users with a fake certificate instead of one belonging to a legitimate site they’re trying to visit, that way Superfish can serve advertisements.

“If this software or any of its control infrastructure is compromised, an attacker would have complete and unrestricted access to affected customers banking sites, personal data and private messages,” security researcher Marc Rogers wrote on his blog.

Superfish CEO Adi Pinhas told ABC News in a statement last week that his company “is completely transparent in what our software does and at no time were consumers vulnerable.”

He added that Superfish stands by a statement Lenovo released making it clear that users are “not tracked nor re-targeted” and “every session is independent” when using Superfish.

Lenovo also said “the relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users. We recognize that the software did not meet that goal and have acted quickly and decisively.”

Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.