New and improved! Now they come with viruses out of the box!

[Andersonjoe711]

This Article Was pretty interesting to me.

Probably posted here anyways, but I though it was worth mentioning.

[ajkula66]

In one word: scary...

[o1001010]

well, that is the reason why every hard drive that i purchase gets a format and every laptop i buy gets a full drive zero.

and i include usb drive with formatting

[jdhurst]

I have heard of this, but it has never happened on an IBM (or the few Lenovo) machines I have purchase for myself, companies and clients. Numbers run in the several hundreds. Never happened. So that story needs to be taken in context. ... JDH

[Andersonjoe711]

Well, I'm not saying that any computers are like this, and thank God that they aren't.

It's just a bad sign that when you buy something from BestBuy for example, you run the risk of that item now being infected with a virus. It takes away the assuredness that, at least I get, by buying some things new.

It's the digital equivalent of the recent series of tainted products traced to China, including toxic toothpaste, poisonous pet food and toy trains coated in lead paint.

Is this the potential for a new war? Commercial warfare?

I don't like it.

[Thane_Bitter]

It is funny, the first computer my family ever owned did come with a virus (Amiga 500), of course, it was very easy to get rid, toss out the floppy and reboot. The infected diskette was part of a sealed software bundle that came with the computer, on closer inspection, that disk (though it had the correct manufactures label and came out of a shrink-wrapped box) was a slightly different colour then all the rest. Someone at the factory must have done it.

Here is a somewhat related story (HP USB Floppy/memory key drive), I suspect, though it is never said outright, the viruses shipped with the product.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/Te ... 080/alerts