Linked – How Windows 10 became malware

“Since then Microsoft has gotten increasingly aggressive in getting people to upgrade to Windows 10. It began stealthily downloading the bits required for the upgrade to PCs automatically without telling people. And then this spring Microsoft sprung a trap. When the upgrade app appeared, if someone clicked the X in its dialog box in order to close it and cancel an upgrade, Windows did the exact opposite of what the person intended to do: It upgraded that person’s PC to Windows 10. Microsoft did that even though the app always behaved in the opposite way before then, which is pretty much the way any legitimate app behaves — closing a dialog box and canceling any actions.

When Microsoft made that change, it violated its own recommended design guidelines, notes Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer. Microsoft tells developers that clicking an X to close a dialog box and halt any action the box might take is the right way to do things. The company writes on a website devoted to design guidelines, “The Close button on the title bar should have the same effect as the Cancel or Close button within the dialog box. Never give it the same effect as OK.”

In this case, that’s exactly what clicking X did: gave it the same effect as OK.”

The only Windows machine I have that isn’t 10 is my company machine, which has a number of security options enabled that most home PC’s would not. I’m assuming that is why I haven’t seen much of the behavior being reported about Microsoft’s aggressive moves with Windows 10. But, if it really is going ahead with the upgrade if you “X” out the window, that is classic malware functionality, and MS should rightly be criticized for it. More than any other company who does the same thing, because Windows is the OS that taught us to do that to close a window without doing anything in the first place!

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3080102/operating-systems/how-windows-10-became-malware.html

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