Have you ever downloaded a less than scrupulous piece of software only to discover the next day that you default browser has been changed and your homepage is some rubbish search engine based in North Korea? I have. So have thousands of others who were attracted by freeware never stopping to think of the scheming companies that lurked behind them. Such as Microsoft.

At the present, when users download IE8, the newest edition of Internet Explorer they will quite obviously have to install it. Now when you’re installing any piece of software you’re given a choice.

a)      Quick Install

b)      Custom install

In most cases the ‘Quick Install’ is already selected for you and most of us will go right on ahead and press ’Next’. Microsoft copped onto that so that when you install IE by choosing the quick install method your default browser and homepage are changed to please Bill Gates.

Microsoft recently came under fire about these practices you would expect from a smaller more desperate company. They responded by saying on their blog that they were making an update and that by August IE8 will ask your permission to become the default browser first.

“IE will never install, or become the default browser without your explicit consent. However, we heard a lot of feedback from a lot of different people and groups and decided to make the user choice of the default browser even more explicit,” Microsoft said.

IE8 has already been in the spotlight when they released the OMGIGP advertisement which Crenk covered here.

• Windows 8 Beta Late February 2012: Official Public Release of Windows 8 in January 2013 – December 8, 2011
• Microsoft Launches Internet Explorer 10 Preview 2: Download Now – June 30, 2011
• New Virus “Erases” Files and Folders: Panics Users – April 27, 2011
• Test Drive Internet Explorer 10 – April 22, 2011
• Internet Explorer 9 to be Available to Download March 14 – March 11, 2011

Internet Explorer Under Critisism…Again originally appeared on: Crenk
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