Technology

58144 readers

5013 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

737

Microsoft PC Manager App 'Repairs' Your System by Making Bing the Search Default (uk.pcmag.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

65 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Microsoft is trying to restore Bing as the default search engine on users' browsers by spinning it as a "repair" through a utility app called PC Manager.

PC Manager is designed to boost a Windows PC's performance by freeing up memory and eliminating unused apps and files. It offers "Health check" and "Repair tips" buttons, which users can click on to see the recommended actions.

However, Windows Latest noticed the app pushing a curious recommendation: Both Repair tips and Health check nudge you to restore Bing as the default search engine on the Edge browser.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (2 children)

forcing the web browser to change the default search engine helps a lot

How does changing your browser's default search engine (from another legitimate search engine) help get rid of malware?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

It doesn't. If a PC is so infected you can't change simple settings like search engine, it's time to reformat.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Been a while since I experienced malware, but they typically forcibly change your browser's default search engine to a shady one with more malware, even after you try to change it to something else. Even for somewhat tech savvy users, this can be somewhat difficult to overcome.

Sounds like Microsoft is somehow overriding this with Bing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I highly doubt that personally. I'd bet money it wouldn't do this with malware just with people who have a clean system and use a different search engine.