482
submitted 11 months ago by kde@floss.social to c/kde@lemmy.kde.social

If you don't use Bing with Edge, Microsoft will tell you your computer needs repairing.

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/windows-operating-systems/microsoft-now-says-your-pc-is-in-need-of-repair-if-youre-not-using-bing-with-edge

They are not wrong.

To mend your machine:

  1. Ditch Windows
  2. Install Plasma
  3. Your computer is ready.

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/

@kde@lemmy.kde.social

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[-] epat@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Ehh, time to play a bit of a devil's advocate.

"Bing with Edge",

  1. it's talking about search engine in edge
  2. a lot of malware will change your search engine, so that may make sense, for less knowledgeable people
  3. it won't do anything on its own, you need to accept the repair step, for your default browser and/or search engine in edge to change
[-] rtxn@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

t won’t do anything on its own, you need to accept the repair step

Do you know what else works like that? Pop-up tech support scams. The target doesn't have to do anything, but it's become a thriving business in many poor regions (Kolkata, India is notorious) and a problem for moderately tech-illiterate users.

I would even say that this anti-feature promotes bad personal security practices because the user may be more inclined to believe "your computer needs repair" pop-ups if the first one they encounter comes from a legitimate, trusted party.

[-] epat@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Yes, it's not a great security practice, and it probably should work more like "we've noticed you have randomly changed your search engine from google/ddg/bing/whatever to this 'random search engine no-one heard about'' instead of blindly reverting to edge and bing.

It seems to be a tool for tech illiterates. A power user will know how to avoid malware, and remove it if they catch it.

They should do a much better job than that, but helping people that don't know what they're doing is not itself a bad thing.

this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
482 points (100.0% liked)

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