HomeWinBuzzer NewsMicrosoft Windows 10 Update Practices to Be Investigated by EFF?

Microsoft Windows 10 Update Practices to Be Investigated by EFF?

A newly created online petition is pushing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation to investigate the Windows 10 automatic updates being pushed by Microsoft.

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's overly aggressive upgrade strategy may have seated over 300 million examples of the platform on machines around the world, but it has drawn huge criticism. The company is essentially forcing users to update to Windows 10 and some people are now pushing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to investigate Microsoft.

Todd Kleinpaste is just one user disgruntled by Microsoft's aggressive Windows 10 updates and has decided to take action. He is the first and founding signature on a change.org petition that pushes the EFF, a digital rights group, to investigate Redmond's practices.

500 signatures is the requested number (a relatively small amount) and has 508 at the time of writing. In the petition, Kleinpaste and those who signed say Microsoft's practices are unethical at best while describing it as bad as dangerous and like malware.

Microsoft's practices with their newest operating system, named Windows 10, has been ignorantly unethical at best and malicious at worst.

There are plenty of stories in the petition about people who were forced by the automatic update to take Windows 10 in the most awkward situations. We wrote a humorous piece about a Windows 10 update interrupting a professional gaming session, but it seems the platform update is actually putting people in potential danger.

One such incident was a man who works fighting poachers in the African bush had the 6GB Windows 10 update forcibly downloaded to one of their computers. This is on a per MB metered connection. It could have happened during an operation, during which the lives of people in combat with militarized poachers could have been out of communication.

Microsoft's free update cycle can be commended for offering the latest platform build for free, but the company has been aggressive in the way it implements the update. The “get Windows 10” pop-up is hugely annoying and many customers simply feel like they are not being given a choice. Incidentally, the cycle ends on July 29th, so the automatic updates will be stopped from then.

Luke Jones
Luke Jones
Luke has been writing about all things tech for more than five years. He is following Microsoft closely to bring you the latest news about Windows, Office, Azure, Skype, HoloLens and all the rest of their products.

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