A few months ago, one of our customers logged into Remote Technical Support (www.4kcc.com/rts) for a Quarterly Checkup. His total time in Remote was about 15 minutes. Since there were no Windows Updates needed, most other updates each took just a minute or two. However, there was an update needed for Apple’s iTunes. This was a large update and his Internet speed was so-so which caused the download to take a lot of time. Of the overall time his computer was in for updates, about 80% of the time was spent on the iTunes update.

I finished his updates, sent him a “Have a nice day” message and logged off. About three minutes later he logged back in and started typing to me. I could tell right away that he was upset. He said, “I was just in for the quarterly checkup and you spent almost the entire time updating iTunes. Why did you update it when I don’t even use it?”

I explained why to him and now I’m going to share the reason with you. It boils down to this: if a program or application is on your computing devices and there are updates available, it needs to be updated. Without updates, it might be possible for a hacker to get onto your device through a security flaw even though you never use the application. Because of this possibility, if you log into Remote and your device has apps that need updated, we’re going to update them.

In the case of the customer who didn’t use iTunes, the solution for avoiding updates was simple – we just removed iTunes from his machine. Unfortunately, we’re not mind readers. I had no idea he didn’t use iTunes until he told me and the same would be true with you and your devices. Unless you tell us you’re not using an app and would like it removed, we’re going to keep installing updates, if needed.

One final thought about removing apps instead of updating them: not all apps can be removed. Some applications are integrated into the OS (Operating System) and can’t be removed. This is true with computers, tablets, smartphones and smartwatches. If that’s the case, we’re going to install the updates, if they are available.