Windows 10: man updates PC, wakes up to find porn slideshow on repeat

Feature is intended to show pictures in a nice, animated slideshow — but depends on people not saving explicit images to their computer

Andrew Griffin
Friday 31 July 2015 19:32 EDT
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One new user of Windows 10 found an especially unwelcome surprise after upgrading to Microsoft’s new operating system — a slideshow on his desktop that was showing pornographic images that he’d saved to his computer, on repeat.

“Loaded up WIN 10 last night and left it on to do its thing,” wrote user FalloutBoS on Reddit. “Woke up to wife asking why I set it to rotate all my porn images right on the desk top view. I have no idea how to shut that feature off and that computer is staying shut down until I do.”

The user appears to have saved the images to one of the default folders on his computer, which then pulled them through for use in what developers presumably meant to be a nice, nostalgic slideshow.

Windows 10 — which was released this week — brings with it the same live tiles that were seen in Windows 8, and on Windows Phone. One of those is called Photos, and has a corresponding app, both of which pull through images from the My Pictures folder and show them on a loop.

It seems to be that feature that caught out the Reddit user. As many pointed out on the Reddit thread, it’s a problem that’s unlikely to hit many upgraders — “I guess it assumes you will not save porn into the pictures folder”, as one said — but could just as easily throw up any other images that you wouldn’t like people to see.

The live tile can easily be turned off, by right-clicking on it and selecting “turn live tile off”. But the easiest way to stop any unexpected images appearing in the app or the tile is to move them out of the My Pictures folder.

“Don't make my mistake, keep your private pictures out of My Pictures, no matter how deep you hide them in sub folders,” the original poster wrote. “My wife is very happy I admitted my mistake on this sub. She said I took my medicine and she now finds it quite funny. 'Ain't love grand?”

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