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Microsoft's official "Bing Wallpaper app" does some nasty, malware-like things to Windows (www.techspot.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The app automatically installs Bing Visual Search and includes code to decrypt cookies saved in other browsers, Rivera said, and it also brings a "free" geolocation web API to the system.

The developer discovered "many" nasty tricks Microsoft integrated in Bing Wallpapers, which include trying to change the browser's settings and set Edge as the default system browser. If the default browser isn't Edge, the app will open the default browser after some time asking to enable the previously installed Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome extension.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Best time was a decade ago. Second best time is now. Same with Google, and Apple, auto companies and grocery companies. And...and...and. it's almost as the free market DOESN'T solve issues it creates them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Oh, free markets can solve these problems, but we don't have a free market. These big companies don't win because they're the best, they win because they buy the marketshare bribe companies to only support their platforms.

ISPs are a fantastic example here. Starting a new ISP is prohibitively expensive, not because of the physical materials you need, but the permits (which the ISPs lobbied for) and lawsuits w/ existing ISPs. In a proper free market, we'd have a lot more selection than we do.

What you call "free market" I call "crony-capitalism." In a free market, monopolies only stay monopolies if they continue to be better than the alternatives. In a crony-capitalist market, monopolies continue if they can make enough barriers to prevent competition.