769
Lenovo's 'encrypted' fingerprint USB drive is just an unencrypted SD card in a fancy case
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2026
769 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
89516 readers
3170 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In the EU most (all?) members have a state-run consumer watchdog organization that can and does escalate measures depending on how big the problem is and how many people are reporting it.
But something like this wouldn't typically make it to the watchdog because there's also consumer law in place to allow people to return faulty/unfit devices. So bad products like these typically get absorbed by merchants and importers, who would find themselves unable to shift that particular product and turn it back to Lenovo. Eventually Lenovo can't find anybody willing to buy the product and have to take the hi[n]t.
The beauty of this system is that it turns the problem back to the commercial side. It takes the regular people (buyers) out of the problem and makes merchants/importers/manufacturers figure it out among themselves. The idea being that "market forces" are real and they work but they shouldn't be inflicted on unsuspecting customers.
It still affects the buyers, though. If I get hacked because I bought crappy "encrypting" hardware, I may not even care about getting my 20 bucks back because I just lost thousands and my life is ruined.
It's a beautiful and appealing idea that market forces will regulate everything if you just let things go. But we've tried that for long enough now to see that the real world is too complex and the consequences of bad regulation are too serious.