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Microsoft has already angered the likes of Ann Widdecombe and Richard Madeley with its Windows 10 pop-ups – now someone has sued the company over its updates.
Teri Goldstein was awarded $10,000 by Microsoft after taking the tech giant to court over loss of earnings. She sued the company after her computer was bricked following a failed update to Windows 10 that was scheduled without her permission.
Microsoft has since made changes to the way free Windows 10 updates are offered to users. A new prompt includes the ability to ‘decline free offer’ – and the ‘X’ at the top corner will no longer update the OS when clicked.
Goldstein – who runs a travel agency business in the US – says her computer started to try and install Windows 10 around the OS’ launch last year, but it failed.
She said it would crash and would be ‘unusable’ for days at a time, reports The Seattle Times.
“I had never heard of Windows 10,” Goldstein said. “Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to update.”
After contacting customer support and failing to fix the problem, Goldstein took Microsoft to court over compensation for lost wages and the cost of a new computer.
Microsoft dropped an appeal and paid out $10,000 to Goldstein. The company denies any wrongdoing, and a Microsoft spokesperson said it ‘halted the appeal to avoid the expense of further litigation’.
Some Windows 7 and 8 users have reported that their computers have been trying to update to Windows 10 without permission. Other reports suggest that Microsoft has made it incredibly difficult for users to opt out of an automatic Windows 10 update.
Last year, Microsoft laid out ambitious plans to get Windows 10 on one billion devices by 2018.
