New app launched to keep Windows 10 at bay

Thanks to a new app, users who do not want to be migrated to Microsoft's Windows 10 PC operating system can shield their PC from any encounters with the latest Windows software.

Never 10, as the app is called vows to "disable Windows' insistence upon upgrading Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10."

The app will help users counter Microsoft's increasingly aggressive efforts to distribute Windows 10, with some users reporting automatic downloads of the software onto their PCs, even when they had denied permission.

First spotted by PCWorld, the app quickly adjusts the settings in Windows 7 or 8.1 PCs to automatically block any attempt by the system to download Windows 10. When users, at a later stage, decide they want Windows 10, they go back into the app and reverse all of its changes.

It may be noted, though, that Never 10 promises not to actually download or install any extra software. The trick is to automatically apply the right settings. According to the information on the product page, one cannot delete it right after it runs.

According to Never 10 developer Steve Gibson, he primarily wrote it in response to privacy concerns about how much information Microsoft gathered from Windows 10 users.

Windows 10 was a free upgrade for most Windows users but had failed to gain the kind of traction that Microsoft had hoped. Microsoft had also tied up with the Chinese government to release a custom edition of Windows 10 for China.

According to Gizmodo, the Chinese edition of Windows 10 was called the ''Windows 10 Specially-provided Edition''. Though the entire list of changes had not been revealed yet, what was known was that the Specially-provided Edition apparently stripped out some games and added a greater degree of administrator control.