Microsoft criticized for changing the pop-up box encouraging users to upgrade
<p><pre><code>    The change occurred because the update is now labelled 
    &quot;recommended&quot; and many people have their PCs configured 
    to accept recommended updates for security reasons. 
</code></pre>
Turn off automatic updating and never turn it back on, ever. At this point, the biggest threat to Windows machines seems to be Microsoft themselves.<p>Manually update any Windows machines you run, unchecking the Windows 10 upgrade every single time. It will never stay unchecked, nor will it ever not be recommended.<p>Until Microsoft decides to override <i>that</i> and literally force it on everyone, which I don&#x27;t doubt they will do as soon as they feel they can afford the class action lawsuits that will result from the few stragglers remaining, there is no other way to avoid the upgrade, unless you actually want to hack the registry or something.