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After an investigation and user outcry, Microsoft says it asked LG to disable a McAfee pop-up that auto-installed from its monitors. So where's the line on acceptable advertising in Windows?
Microsoft is an advertising company. Not just an advertising company, true, it makes software and hardware and sells online services. But it made $10 billion in revenue from “search and news advertising” in 2025, according to its own numbers. This isn’t a new problem — despite being paid software, Windows is absolutely stuffed with advertising, stem to stern.
But recently, some owners of LG monitors noticed that they were getting extra ads delivered via Windows Update, ostensibly disguised as helpful software. Not ads for Microsoft services. Not ads for LG products. Ads for McAfee, the kind of bloatware that’s been clogging up budget laptops with pre-installed junk since the 90s.
They were, understandably, upset. Now Microsoft, of all companies, is doing damage control.
LG monitors auto-install McAfee adware and popups via Windows Update
Here’s how this is supposed to work. Windows automatically detects hardware connected to your PC, and then hits up Microsoft’s Windows Update servers for relevant drivers and companion apps. It’s the kind of thing that’s supposed to be invisible, doing the work behind the scenes so that you don’t really have to think about drivers or updates. Anyone who remembers spending hours tracking down drivers from a dozen different sources, online or even on CDs and floppy disks, can appreciate a system that does all that work for you.
But with convenience comes opportunity, at least if you’re an advertiser. That’s why I can’t check my front porch camera app for a package without getting an ad for a robot vacuum. (That’s not an exaggeration; I just checked.) So somebody at LG decided that, in addition to the basic monitor driver and management app delivered to its users via Windows Update, it would slip in an additional program, “LG Monitor App Installer.” This extra bit of software includes McAfee, or an ad for it — as if there was any difference.
Several users noted that this software was installed even though they hadn’t plugged in anything except an HDMI or DisplayPort cable. That’s enough for Windows to detect the model of the monitor, but not install software pre-loaded on the device itself, like, say, a USB flash drive. Even an experienced user wouldn’t assume that plugging in a video cable would grant unspoken permission to load up external applications.
You should check out the full Gamers Nexus report to get all the details. But long story short, the app is a portal to other applications, most of which make sense, including a calibration tool and a “dual controller” app that looks like a software KVM. But at the bottom of the list is a free McAfee trial, the pop-up that got people’s attention in the first place. This is, almost certainly, included via a lucrative agreement between LG and the software security vendor.
This creates a pop-up ad for McAfee that runs when you boot up the PC, almost every single time — one out of every thirty reboots in GN’s testing, it showed an ad for another LG app. Gamers Nexus theorizes that LG could swap out the advertising slot for another product remotely. It’s adware.
It’s just adware. And since it comes automatically with a monitor that costs over $1,000 USD, it’s understandable why users were upset.
The advertising, which has been going on across multiple LG monitor models for more than a year, isn’t even the most objectionable problem. The LG Monitor App Installer program also has a distressing amount of default permissions, including “all system resources” and access to the PC’s internet connection. LG’s privacy policy includes the collection of hardware device info and geolocation, online user activity, and account data. Exactly how much of that data is being collected or transferred isn’t clear.