If you have new software and want to let people know while simultaneously respecting their privacy, there's a long list of things you might do. Send an email you obtained licitly and respect opt out requests. Advertise on related websites. Publicize it on Product Hunt, promote it on social media, or just let people discover it organically and share it over time.

Or if you're Microsoft and have a lousy piece of software no one's excited about, abuse your position as an operating system provider to push it via the Windows Update process. I woke up to this the other day, as I'm sure millions of other users did, with no way to close out.

Locking the entire screen, preventing any other user action besides continuing through it or killing it with the task manager, that's not enough. No, if you're gonna abuse your users, do it right. Add icons to the desktop and taskbar, pin them, and even make it so the next time they open a bookmarked page from their desktop they get a prompt to "do more online with the ho-hum browser from Microsoft".

What's really wonderful is the prominent placement of "Your privacy is our priority" on the main screen that locked everything else. Did they forget the word "low"? Seriously though, hugely awful decision Microsoft... and an antitrust lawsuit just waiting to happen.

Can't even visit their website without it being thrown in our faces. 🙄

But now that I've been reminded of its existence, who knows... if Brave, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Netscape 6 in a Windows 98 VM don't work out, maybe I'll give it a try.