Lenovo, one of the leading notebook, desktop and mobile devices manufacturer, was caught red handed distributing spyware called SuperFish recently. The SuperFish spyware uses signed security certificates that allow interception of your secure connections and collect information about your web browsing habits. It then “suggests” the user about related products based on this behavior pattern. Unlike other usual spyware programs, it can even inject the advertisements in the web pages accessed over secure connections. Lenovo has confirmed pre-loading of the SuperFish spyware program in their computers since the mid 2014.
Though Lenovo has stopped SuperFish servers and has stopped pre-loading this program on their new computers since the January 2015, yet the older computers shipped prior to January this year could still contain SuperFish. Here is how you can detect and remove the SuperFish spyware from your Lenovo computer:
For detection, you can just use Google Chrome or Internet Explorer web browser (do not use any other web browser as only these two browsers (and their derivatives) are affected) to visit the website https://filippo.io/Badfish/. In a matter of 10 seconds, you will be shown if your computer is affected with SuperFish.
For removal, Lenovo has provided their own tool to remove the SuperFish from your Lenovo PC. This tool can automatically remove SuperFish from your PC including the program and the SSL certificates without any problems. Just download the Automatic SuperFish Removal Tool from Lenovo website and launch it. Click on the Analyze and Remove SuperFish Now button to proceed with the removal.
Lenovo has also made the manual removal instructions available for everyone. You can go through the manual removal instructions on the Lenovo website and follow them as explained in the document. Though these are very detailed manual instructions, we suggest that you use the automatic SuperFish removal tool for fast and easy removal.
Conclusion: Lenovo’s preloaded SuperFish spyware can display some unwanted advertisements in your Windows PC. But it is very easy to remove this spyware using the tools made available by Lenovo itself.