Computer maker Lenovo has come in for some major criticism in the last few days, after it was discovered that many of their laptops were bundled with a nasty piece of adware called Superfish. Superfish injects additional adverts into the "Ads By Google" panel on many of the web pages you visit, which presumably earns Lenovo some additional cash.

What's particularly worrying about this adware, however, is that it also generates fake SSL certificates on your computer to allow it to intercept encrypted web traffic. This means, for example, that if you're logged into your bank's web site to view highly confidential information, Superfish is decrypting the web page in the background in order to be able to inject adverts into it. Which is probably against just about every bit of computer crime legislation in the world.

Lenovo eventually apologised and has stopped including Superfish in its products. It has also issued a free software tool which will check for the presence of Superfish on your computer and disable it. If you run a Lenovo laptop (the company says it was never installed on desktops), it's important that you download and run the removal tool as it can pose a significant security risk.

You'll find more information from Lenovo, plus a link to the tool, at http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1931 and the tool itself is around 6 MB to download. The program is malware-free according to VirusTotal and Web of Trust. If you'd rather remove Superfish manuallly, the page also includes details on how to do so.