A new Microsoft Update appeared on my Windows 7 desktop today, and was marked as “Important”. It is referenced as KB3035583.
It seemed odd to me to see Microsoft push out an “Important” rated update out of normal update rotation, so I looked up the details on their site. The description is very generic and useless. Doing a quick Google search brought me a story on Infoworld. Here they describe that a German researcher has determined, that this is going to be a way for Microsoft to promote the upcoming “free” Windows 10 release on our computers.
Time will tell how “free” Windows 10 will be. Nothing for “free” comes without strings attached. Especially from a for-profit company. But that will be another discussion for down the road.
What I find interesting is that Microsoft appears to have gone out of their way to not explain this in the details of this “Important” update. Seemingly wanting us to assume it’s just another bug or security fix that we are accustomed to doing on a regular basis. Only to have installed (what is described) as a new adware reminder popup to get the new “free” OS upgrade.
A thought goes through my head discovering this. Is the new kinder and more open Microsoft back to being the evil and distrusted Microsoft or years gone by, by sneaking ads and offers into our operating system? Virtually taking a page out of the Google playbook by forcing ads on us cause they give us something for “free”.
I wouldn’t mind so much if they were upfront about it, but if you they have to hide it from us, and not allow us to “opt-in”, why would any intelligent person want to start down a road where the first step is disguised?
