This was bad news for data privacy because in theory, Lenovo could have used Superfish to generate a valid encryption certificate, giving them an opportunity to abuse this trust to spy on PC owners. With Superfish, Lenovo allegedly used self-signed certificates - as Lenovo is a known and trusted brand - making Superfish the root Certificate Authority (CA), meaning it can decide which encrypted communications to trust.

The app caused an uproar not only because of its disruptive ads, but also because it was found that Lenovo had essentially interrupted what’s known in the industry as the certificate chain - a chain of trust whereby companies that run machines that users visit as they traverse the internet provide certificates that prove they’re a legitimate party. A deep dive into the problem led to the discovery of pre-installed software called Superfish - malware in the form of an adware pusher. In mid-2014, Lenovo users noticed that something was awry with their web browsers: banner ads were breaking webpage layouts and pop-ups were making surfing unpleasant. These software apps come with your hardware pre-installed, and very often, it isn’t always apparent how to delete them properly.

Bloatware is software that nobody asked for but is on your computer, taking up valuable space.

Windows bloatware removal