Fearing forced Windows 10 upgrades, users are disabling critical updates instead

The only behavior that could deny the Windows 10 upgrade before—closing the pop-up by pressing the X in the upper-right corner—now counts as consent for the upgrade, and worse, the upgrade installation can automatically begin even if you take no action whatsoever.

“I fear some segment of consumers will turn off Windows Update as a result,” Wes Miller, research vice president at Directions on Microsoft, told me. “Which is a very bad side effect.”

The consumer versions of Windows 10 don’t allow you to disable or manually install Windows Updates. If Microsoft pushes out a Windows 10 update, you will receive it eventually.