Hidden software found in 20H2 update.

Adguard is an Ad blocking program, multi platform, their site says the Windows version works with any browser and is a desktop program - I really can't see this being bundled with 20H2. Did you download an ISO to upgrade? If so, what was its source?

Pacman23 said:

Did you download an ISO to upgrade? If so, what was its source?

This sounds like it could be the most plausible explanation, or maybe some website had launched a phishing attack to trick the unsuspecting user into believing it was Windows Update asking to proceed with the 20H2 upgrade, possibly Windows Update was hijacked on the computer or the whole computer had been infected with some rootkit/backdoor trojan already before Windows Update offered the option to install the 20H2 upgrade. (The OP uses Windows 10 Home, which does not support Microsoft's Application Guard browser extension according to the link I gave in my previous post, therefore it seems very unlikely that Microsoft's Application Guard would intercept webpages in browsers like Firefox and Chrome if using Windows 10 Home after all.)

Hi folks
If installing / re-installing Windows only use ISO's generated by the MCT or from UUPDUMP. Then those ISO's are 100% Microsoft with no "added extras", trialware, special offers or whatever.

Cheers
jimbo

Pacman23 said:

Adguard is an Ad blocking program, multi platform, their site says the Windows version works with any browser and is a desktop program - I really can't see this being bundled with 20H2. Did you download an ISO to upgrade? If so, what was its source?

No, the upgrade was one of those upgrades pushed by MS.

This is the story.
When I first bought the computer it had win7 home installed, and it had a digital license linked to my MS account, then after a while, MS offered free upgrades to win10, by using the media creation tool from MS website, so I upgraded to win10, and win10 has been left to auto update itself since day one of it's install, up until recently every update was fine, I've been using the computer with no problems, then, wham! adguard appears when I update to 20H2. I haven't changed anything, there has been no extra extensions, apart from the ones I use for chrome:-

adblock for youtube
adblockplus
Avast online security
Avast passwords
Scriptsafe
Speeddial VFD
uBlock origin
uBlock Origin Extra
Eversync

And none of those has adguard otherwise it would have shown itself all the time I've been using win10 v1909, and seeing that nothing has changed, I allowed the upgrade to 20H2, and when it all finished and rebooted, I saw the obvious changes, but didn't see any other hidden changes, and then a few days later, I went to visit kompoz (as well as many other sites) then adguard suddenly hijacked the page, I then tried it on Opera, Firefox, and Edge, and adguard hijacked the page on all browsers, so I tried another website, tubitv, and yep same thing, and baring in mind I haven't changed anything since the upgrade, so I reverted back to 1909 and adguard no longer appears, which as a no-brainer, does indicate that 'something' has been added after the upgrade, and the only assumption is MS has added something, because if it wasn't in a previous version, but appeared in a new version, isn't that a no-brainer as to what has happened?

This is a link to an image on adguard website, for the exact adguard page that is displayed when going to either tubitv or kompoz, they have it as an example to an adult website, but I don't go to those:-

https://cdn.adguard.com/public/Adgua...e/parental.jpg

Post hoc ergo propter hoc - just because two things happen in sequence, doesn’t mean there’s a causal relationship.