Gadgetory

if you bought a Lenovo computer recently I have some bad news for you I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNET update lenovo has been caught pre-installing adware on its computers and that activates when an owner turns on their computer right out of the box this ad where leaves Lenovo computers susceptible to being hacked Lenovo poisoned its own computers just to make some more money by forcing you to see extra pop-up ads on websites it's so bad it borders on the hard to believe screenshots shared online show that the ads pop up when you hover over certain images on a website people report this happening when using Internet Explorer and Google Chrome although Lenovo has said in statements that it's safe other security experts say otherwise the adware is called super fish and it's programmed with a bad security certificate that can break their encryption hackers can use this weakness as a backdoor to spying your browsing and steal sensitive data with this on your computer you wouldn't know if you're visiting a fake banking website superfish is reported to have been shipped on Lenovo pcs since mid-2014 lenovo says it stopped putting super fish in computers and January of this year we didn't find it installed on some lenovo laptops that we have in the CNET lab but if you have a Lenovo computer you need to do a quick check if you're infected search for a program called visual discovery and uninstall it you also need to manually remove the bogus superfish security certificate and then follow that up with a virus scan because antivirus programs have flagged this as a bad thing you can find a detailed explanation of how to remove it on SEANET I don't know how anyone will trust a Lenovo computer after a dirty move like this well in other news samsung has a new tool in the battle against Apple pay the company just purchased looppay which is another mobile payments company that works a little differently than Apple pay or Google Wallet it doesn't use NFC it actually works on old card swiping machines looppay is integrated into a smart phone case you press the button on the back of the case when you're next to a traditional credit card magnetic strip Swiper and wirelessly sends the payment data through retailers don't need to buy special machines or software to accept this mobile payment now that Samsung harnesses this technology the company could combine that with NFC to create some sort of mobile payment service that works on all types of machines old and new and instead of a bulky case maybe it'll be built into the next Samsung Galaxy phone the Galaxy s6 will be unveiled at an event on March 1st and samsung plans to show off new mobile payment offerings that's your tech news update there's always more at cnet.com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey