Lenovo is not having a good time right now, and rightfully so. Its inclusion of the Superfish adware on some of its consumer products has caused outrage and shock in the tech community. It is important to remember that Lenovo is not the super-villain in this story, Superfish is. In other words, the manufacturer was not intentionally malicious, but most likely misguided.

Today, Microsoft is a super hero -- Aquaman if you will -- and its super power is Windows Defender. Yes, Aquaman is destroying the Superfish villain, leaving Lenovo as the now-saved damsel in distress.

If you own a Lenovo PC, you only have to update your Windows Defender Definitions and run a scan. These definitions may have already been installed automatically, so don't worry if a Windows Update refresh reveals nothing.

After you run the scan, Defender should detect and remove the threat. With that said, not every Lenovo PC has Superfish installed, so if nothing is detected, that may be OK; its possible you were not affected in the first place.

Even if you are not on a Lenovo PC, I would recommend regualrly updating Defender and running weekly scans as a best practice.

After Defender removes Superfish, I would still suggest heading over to the Lastpass website here, where you can see if the removal was successful.

Some Firefox users have reported the certificate remaining installed. If you are a user of Mozilla's browser, you should follow Lastpass' instructions below.

Open Firefox

Click the menu in the top right and select "Options" or open the Tools menu > Options

Click the Advanced tab

Click "View Certificates"

Scroll through until you see Superfish Inc

Click the Superfish, Inc - Software Security Device option

Press "Delete or Distrust"

Confirm it shows "Superfish Inc" and press OK

Was your system affected? Tell me about it in the comments.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia / Fair use