Pictured: Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress and founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. (Josh Hallett, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

In an uncommon move, WordPress developers earlier this month automatically pushed an important security update for the popular Loginizer plug-in to roughly 1 million people, which caught some unsuspecting users off-guard in the process.

The decision, which was made to ensure a significant vulnerability didn't wreak havoc, is one all software and app developers wrestle with themselves when establishing patching policies: under what circumstances should software updates be taken out of the hands of users? And should potential backlash factor into the decision making?

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Topics:

Network Security Patch management Vulnerability Management