Security concerns with Acrobat Reader (Now called DC?)

Report · Jan 10, 2017

I gave up on Acrobat Reader a long time ago because it was very resource intensive. The free alternatives performed faster and that was the only reason. Since I've got a decent PC for the first time in ages (Core i7, SSD), Acrobat now starts very fast and provides vastly superior search capabilities within large text books and other documents. For comparison, Sumatra PDF takes about 4-5 seconds to search for the next instance of a word, while Acrobat is immediate.

However, today, I booted up my work PC to see Chrome immediately tell me a new extension was installed relating to Acrobat and offered to allow it through or block/delete. Since I did not request it, I removed it.

Where does Adobe as a company get off telling me when my applications should be installed/updated as well as installing Chrome extensions WITHOUT TELLING ME or prompting me!? This is a security failure from almost all fronts.

Add a prompt. List details of what is being installed. This is unacceptable and is exactly the reason why third party PDF readers are able to proliferate. I'd love to continue using your software, but not with this kind of a security risk.

Report · Jan 12, 2017

Hi UtahJarhead,

Adobe is now bundling the Acrobat Chrome extension with Adobe Acrobat Reader DC so that you can easily open PDFs in Reader while browsing the web. Once enabled, the extension will:

• open PDF files in the Acrobat Reader desktop app

• offer a consistent and reliable PDF viewing experience

• provide access to all the tools you need to add comments, fill forms, and sign PDFs

The Acrobat Chrome extension is automatically installed with Acrobat Reader, but must be activated before use. You can choose whether or not to activate the extension and can easily disable it at any time. The extension does not read the content of your PDFs or any content on the sites you visit.

For more information: Open PDFs in Acrobat Reader from Chrome

Thank You,

Shivam

Report · Jan 12, 2017

I understand that. My issue is that the upgrade was applied without ANY form of user intervention or prompting. I had no idea it was happening until it showed up, already installed. This is unacceptable by ANY standard.