Please STOP bundling McAfee with your Flash Player Update

My Mozilla Firefox just updated itself without asking, and the first message it displays on completion is that I need to update my Flash Player.  I figure Firefox already committed me to the upgrade process, so I might as well see it through. I click the link to upgrade flash, and instead of loading flash, it installs the Adobe Download Manager. If I wanted another program to manage downloads on my computer, one would figure I would have installed it by now.

Committed to the update process, I go ahead and permit the Adobe Download Manager to be installed on my machine. The very first thing it does is installs McAffee Security Center on top of the various other Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware software already existant on my machine. I've been in IT for 25 years and let me assure you, IT DID NOT ASK. There was NO checkbox. There was NO opt out.

After all of Adobe and Adobe related trashware was installed on my machine, it finally installed the flash plugin it could have installed via the Mozilla Plugin interface without all the spam.

I figure Adobe already took the first thirty minutes of my productivity this morning, I might as well give them another 30 by posting this story on their websites, Mozillas, as well as about 10 other high SEO ranked forums.

To Adobe:

Whatever revenue you think you are generating by bundling such crap with your flash plugin, you are losing in bad PR. When the time comes to recommend a client install Corel suite vs Adobe CSX, this event will immediately come to mind. You are alienating your customers. While Flash may be somewhat of an industry standard, alternatives are gaining steam daily. Stop the unscrupulous business practices unless you want people to remove ALL of your software like the malware I just downloaded.

Regards,

John

Thanks for all your responses. I guess this is why I don't work in the IT department Well, I won't be using the auto installer again.

It still seems kind tricky and underhanded to bundle stuff like that. That's just me though.

I agree with this. I got yelled at by our IT department becuase of this silly McAfee program that was installed unbeknowst to me. I just completed another update of Flash and low and behold, this program was installed again! I didn't even have to option not to choose it. Unfortunately, I need flash for my job, so I have no choice but to install the update. Please stop doing this! I don't want this software on my computer nor does my IT department.

Thanks