This is nothing new. For about 30 years now Microsoft has been constantly repeating various flavors of this “make it so a thing can automatically and silently run programs as soon as it touches your computer” thing. It’s always done in the name of user convenience. It always ends up being a fiasco. I don’t know why they keep doing it, it’s not like the exact same PHB keeps making the same decision over and over for 30 years. It’s probably one or a combination of the many well documented flavors of stupid that are deeply baked into the company’s organizational culture.
(And before the inevitable response, no this is not defending Microsoft. Pointing out that an organization’s culture is too deeply, chronically stupid to avoid opening the exact same obvious and gaping security hole over and over and over and over again is not the same as saying, “it’s fine, actually.”)
It all comes from the increasingly widely held idea that the user should not be the ultimate authority over what should run on his computer. The OS vendor should have a say. Third party developers should have a say. Device manufacturers should have a say. Anyone except the user, who is just a passenger on his own system. And this mentality is not limited to Microsoft.
Windows has worked like spyware since what, the late Windows 7 days or thereabout?
End users should not regard this as inevitable. Or get caught up in the how-it-works-how-to-disable swamp. Instead, cut through to the essence. It's about respect:
# Microsoft does not respect Windows users (or users of any of their offerings?).
# LG does not respect people who buy their monitors (and perhaps other products?).
Knowing that, why would you use such a sleazy company's product for daily driving? Or give them your money? Would you buy bread from a baker who pisses on your lawn every time you're not looking?
User rights or consumer protection laws aren't even part of this equation. Although they do help (sometimes a lot!) to keep companies honest.
Because alternatives are much worse or not available for scenarios people need.
There, I've said the obvious.
MS-Windows GUI has cashed on this unawareness since 95. "My Computer", "The computer needs to restart"... Being deliberately incorrect to add to the existing confusion.
This is basically the same as downloading a program, running it and when it downloads garbage on your computer, complaining that Windows are dumb for allowing a program to download garbage.
Because windows update automatically installs the garbage when the device is connected.
Microsoft could control the content of the software it automatically installs, but they don't. That's the issue.