I get your concern, but I think you are overplaying Lenovo's intent. They received money (according to Lenovo, it was a small amount) from Superfish to pre-install that software on consumer oriented computers. This is common for computer manufacturers as a way of subsidizing computers so they can sell them so cheap. Within 3 or so months, Lenovo shut it down after finding out that Superfish was doing what you said. The bigger issue was whether the Superfish system could have been hacked as a way of injecting viruses on computers. The short article I read didn't sound like it had happened at this time.

This was never an issue on the business oriented Thinkpads. This supports my advice for purchasers of Dell, Lenovo or any other brand. Buy the business machines. They tend to be made of better components and don't usually have as much crap on them. They usually start at a higher price, but you pay for it up front, not in continued problems down the road.