It seems this topic is turning into a series…

I wrote before about Picasa and Netflix not taking no for an answer, but it seems this is actually a widespread phenomenon. The state of our industry today is that we found ways to turn something as straightforward as asking a Yes/No question into an overly complex, almost fraudulent even, user interface, that seems to be ‘targeting’ inexperienced users, attempting to take advantage of their lack of computing knowledge.

Today it’s Microsoft turn to be confronted with the unethical way into which it has been deceiving users into upgrading to Windows 10. Paul Thurret describes on his blog how Microsoft has apparently, in it’s quest to get people to upgrade to Windows 10, stooped as low as turning that most universal NO button in Windows, the red close button with the white cross in it, into actually doing the opposite from what it always does.

Last week, Microsoft silently changed Get Windows 10 yet again. And this time, it has gone beyond the social engineering scheme that has been fooling people into inadvertently upgrading to Windows 10 for months. This time, it actually changed the behavior of the window that appears so that if you click the “Close” window box, you are actually agreeing to the upgrade. Without you knowing what just happened.

Microsoft has actually been sued for it’s tactics.

A few days after Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public last year, Teri Goldstein’s computer started trying to download and install the new operating system. The update, which she says she didn’t authorize, failed.

When outreach to Microsoft’s customer support didn’t fix the issue, Goldstein took the software giant to court. She won. Last month, Microsoft dropped an appeal and Goldstein collected a $10,000 judgment from the company.

Microsoft is no stranger to deceit. As I blogged about before, the company is allowing some very deceitful advertisements on it’s platform, even though they have the power to ban such ads if they would care. And their Skype installer is peddling bloatware. Up till now I believed they did care but they just missed it… But apparently they really don’t care at all… They didn’t settle with this angry customer because they admit they did something wrong; they did it to avoid further legal costs on the issue:

The company denies wrongdoing, and a spokeswoman said Microsoft halted its appeal to avoid the expense of further litigation.

Well, technically they have broken no law. So we can’t blame them. But we sure as hell can shame them. Shame on you Microsoft!

Do you know other software that does not take no for an answer? Share it in the comments below.