Microsoft to Pay $10 000 for Unwanted Windows 10 Update

Microsoft has agreed to pay $10 000 (about R152 000) to a US woman after an automatic Windows 10 update rendered her computer unusable to her business.

Teri Goldstein, who runs a travel agency in California, said her computer automatically updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 without her express permission, and after the update her computer ran extremely slowly and would frequently crash, rendering it useless to her business.

Goldstein sued Microsoft for loss of income and for compensation to replace her computer. After Goldstein won her case, Microsoft "dropped its appeal to avoid the expense of further litigation," although it still denies wrongdoing in the matter, a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Accustomed to clicking the red "X" in the top right corner of Windows pop-ups in order to ignore them without taking any further action, many users did so with pop-up notifications recommending an upgrade date and time for Windows 10, only to find that the pop-ups had been structured so clicking "X" meant "yes", and their computers automatically updated without them specifically agreeing to this.

While Microsoft is pushing users to take advantage of its free Windows 10 upgrade offering before it expires on 29 July, it has made little acknowledgement of users who do not want to upgrade.

Reasons users have for wanting to more easily avoid Windows 10 include running hardware or software that is incompatible with the new operating system, reluctance to learn how a new operating system works, and privacy concerns due to tracking features Microsoft is using to gather data about Windows 10 use patterns.