Week 5 Blog 2: Installation of Windows Update Without User Permission

Windows surprised lots of their users by downloading windows updates without asking any permission. The people who are get surprised are the ones who had set up the operating system to ask them for permission before installing any updates or patches. Lots of users who have mentioned above noticed after June 9th, their computers start windows updates and set of security patches when they are rebooting or turning on their computers. This will happen when windows determine new patches, then sometimes it will show update icons in the task bar. That’s the case when you are rebooting or turning on, those update will be installed without caring about the permission part. I believe this bug should be solved and windows should not be able to decide to install the updates. One of the reason, that I agree with, is that Microsoft released numerous versions of patches on the same date. And in one of the article mentioned, the extra demand for downloading patches and updates, may have caused some downloads to be incomplete. Also Microsoft Support Document admits that “incompletes downloads are known to disable the notification icon and possibly the approval dialog that's supposed to appear during shutdown.” Microsoft manager denied the updates issues were a bug. Paul Pottorff, a senior product manager with the Windows Update team, said "[But] If there is only a throttled update, they shouldn't be notified. If there are any other available updates, they should be notified. The presence of a throttled update does not prevent Automatic Updates from notifying users about other not-throttled updates. Furthermore, this behavior has been the same for a long time and hasn't even been touched for more than 9 months." This problem of updating without permission is not something new and the same kind of problem had happened on 2007. In the article there are some notes on how to control windows updates. I believe since windows had that update, their teams should be familiar with this kind of bug and try to avoid having that bug in the patches.

Source:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/167352/is_windows_installing_updates_without_permission.html

Other Sources:
http://windowssecrets.com/2009/06/25/01-Windows-may-install-updates-without-asking
http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/06/is_windows_installing_updates.php