Microsoft is investigating complaints from Windows users
that patches have been installed without their consent as a result
of the Automatic Update (AU) application being turned on without
their knowledge.
Complaints have been made following the company releasing a
batch of security patches last Tuesday.
Nate Clinton, program manager for Microsoft Update, said on the
Microsoft Update blog, "We have been hearing some questions
recently regarding Tuesday's update release changing automatic
updating settings.
"We have received some logs from customers, and have so far been
able to determine that their Automatic Update settings were not
changed by any changes to the AU client itself and also not changed
by any updates installed by AU."
Clinton said, "We are still looking into this to see if another
application is making this change during setup with user consent,
or if this issue is related to something else."
There is a suggestion that any problem may be caused by the
Microsoft Office suite or Redmond's Windows OneCare security
protection service.
Many users do not want automatic updates as they can be received
at inconvenient times when other applications are being used, and
can slow wireless connections.
Some updates can also be inappropriate and can change settings
to other programs, so a number of users like to select which
patches are installed.