Lenovo settles two-year-old U.S. trade complaint, to pay US$3.5 million fine

September 11, 2017

SHANGHAI - Lenovo will pay a US$3.5 million fine to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle charges it says it doesn’t completely agree with. Caixin reports that the FTC, along with 32 U.S. States, first alleged that the world’s second-largest seller of personal computers was harming consumers after some of its laptops were discovered in February 2015 to be preloaded with software called VisualDiscovery.

VisualDiscovery caused popup ads to appear onscreen and disrupted the internet encryption used to protect users’ sensitive information when they visited certain websites.

The software had “access to all of a consumer’s sensitive personal information transmitted over the internet, including login credentials, Social Security numbers, medical information, and financial and payment information”, according to a statement by the FTC. www.webershandwick.cn (ATI).