Lenovo says it has stopped installing “Superfish” adware on consumer notebooks. The world’s No. 1 PC seller also says it has found no signs of a possible security loophole in the adware, which some have labeled “malware.”

Lenovo reacted after a worldwide flurry of news reports Thursday, many of which criticized the world’s No. 1 PC manufacturer. Lenovo customers had also complained in a Lenovo online forum.

In a lengthy statement provided to WRAL TechWire, Lenovo spokesperson Ray Gorman, who is based at Lenovo’s executive headquarters in Morrisville, said Superfish had stopped being installed by Lenovo and would not be preloaded “in the future.”

He acknowledged that Lenovo had preloaded Superfish, which is from a company based in Israel and California, between September and December. The intent, he wrote, was “to help customers potentially discover interesting products while shopping.”

Lenovo stopped the installs due to negative reaction from buyers.

“[U]ser feedback was not positive, and we responded quickly and decisively,” Gorman said.

He noted Lenovo took three steps:

“1)  Superfish has completely disabled server side interactions (since January) on all Lenovo products so that the product is no longer active.  This disables Superfish for all products in market.
“2)  Lenovo stopped preloading the software in January.
“3)   We will not preload this software in the future.”

Gorman said said Lenovo did not find “any evidence to substantiate security concerns.”

“But,” he added, “we know that users reacted to this issue with concern, and so we have taken direct action to stop shipping any products with this software.  We will continue to review what we do and how we do it in order to ensure we put our user needs, experience and priorities first.”

Gorman in the statement said Superfish was not used for any nefarious reasons. Some industry experts and writers said the software not only exposed possible security vulnerabilities but also would allow tracking of user information,
 
“To be clear, Superfish technology is purely based on contextual/image and not behavioral. It does not profile nor monitor user behavior,” Gorman explained.

“It does not record user information. It does not know who the user is. Users are not tracked nor re-targeted.   Every session is independent. Users are given a choice whether or not to use the product.  The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users.  We recognize that the software did not meet that goal and have acted quickly and decisively.
 
“We are providing support on our forums for any user with concerns.  Our goal is to find technologies that best serve users.  In this case, we have responded quickly to negative feedback, and taken decisive actions to ensure that we address these concerns.  If users still wish to take further action, detail information is available at {[a href=”external_link-1”}}http://forums.lenovo.com