Pirate software alerts ever 15 minutes.

[debwarr]

Hi, I started getting alerts every 15 seconds yesterday at work about my adobe software not being genuine. It's completely distracting.

A) I've been purchasing adobe software for 28 years now. ALL of it is legitimate. Every upgrade was purchased through Adobe—by me. Ever update was manually performed through Adobe's site—by me. I'm a sole proprietor and have literally spent upwards of $10,000 from my own pocket on Adobe software and to be harassed by Adobe alerts like this is ridiculous. I cannot find anyway to turn it off.

B) I've spent hours online searching for a resolution... nothing.

I've called Adobe a dozen times but cannot get to a real person without paying money for a support contract.

I finally called Adobe sales to talk to a real adobe person and they simply say I have to upgrade to CC because they no longer support CS6. I told them I don't want product support, I want them to stop falsely accusing me of pirating, and I want these alerts off my system. Nada... he could only sell me CC.

C) I will never be going to the CC version, especially when CS6 works perfectly fine for me... I use InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and a few other programs from Adobe.

– CC is WAY beyond my means of affordability. (one person here... loyal customer for 3 decades)

– I live/work rural and can only access a satellite connection: Capped Data Here!

– I will not put client work in at risk in a cloud where it can be hacked.

All of the above are givens... there's no disputing it. I don't want an adobe rep to advise me how they can use a payment plan, or how all i need to do are Dismiss the alerts. I've had to dismiss it 3 times already just writing this.

I want to know

1) Can Adobe TURN OFF THESE ALERTS?

If not:

2) Why is Adobe FALSELY ACCUSING ME OF PIRATING their software. I have proof of legitimacy, including serial numbers

3) Isn't disrupting someone 50 times—and forcing them to perform an action—AN ILLEGAL BUSINESS PRACTICE?

4) Why would Adobe spit in the face of a loytal customer they've made so so much money off of?

5) Exactly how much more money does Adobe feel is owed by a loyal customer like me?

I feel like I'm being held hostage, and some of research has referred to CS6 owners not even being allowed to reinstall their owned Adobe software. Heaven forbid I get a new computer (and toss my current computer) and need to reinstall my owned software.

I'm not looking for software support. I simply want the software I legal own to not expire on me, given that there were NO expiration dates on it's usage to begin with.

[Szalam]

DrewW72680 wrote:

I just did a system update to my MAC and Adobe is now telling me the same thing! It says something about the software being pirated. Yet when it takes me to the Adobe genuine software screen all of my programs pass, so why the hell did it tell me that my software may be pirated.

Something likely got messed un in your system during the update. Uninstalling, running the Adobe CC Cleaner, and reinstalling the software will likely fix the problem.

[John T Smith]

Of course, installing CS6 on the latest Mac operating system has other problems... again, NOT caused by Adobe, since Adobe has not changed/updated CS6 in going on 5 years now

CS6 and earlier programs have not been tested and will not be updated for Mac El Capitan/Sierra

-which means that you try to use CS6 and earlier at YOUR risk of having problems

-https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/install-creative-suite-mac-os-sierra.html

[Stone-Rogers]

I spent over an hour on the phone with Adobe last night trying to get this sorted out.

Over and over again, the Adobe reps. stated that I had "tampered" software purchased from an unauthorized reseller. I have the original packaging and gave them the serial number of the product-CS5 Design Prem. My online screen shows all the applications Pass without anything noted in the "Tampered" column, even though the Adobe reps state that on their screens they show the software "Tampered".

I mentioned that I would have purchased this from one of two sources-Adobe or Amazon. Well, they, "hung their hats" on Amazon being an unauthorized seller. I tried, (in vain) to tell them I had purchased the software from EITHER Amazon OR Adobe. No avail.

I went through my Amazon purchases while on the phone with them and I could not find the purchase there. Looking through the Adobe site, I could not find the purchase...

Until this morning. Lo and Behold! I have a purchase invoice number where I bought this from ADOBE. The invoice is buried in a link from the main orders page, "Boxed Sets".

At the end of the call, the Adobe Rep. said I could uninstall and reinstall the software and see if that works OR he could go over Creative Cloud pricing and offer me a discount on CC.

To me, this is simply a way to have users of older software, (that works just fine) switch over to Creative Cloud and be forever shackled to the $600/year Adobe subscription model.

[debwarr]

Stone, File a complaint with the BBB (bbb.org). I'm getting REAL answers now from an adobe person. The guys in this room are lieing... Adobe needs to be held accountable. Deb

[debwarr]

stone, whatever you do do NOT uninstall your current software. they CAN disallow you from reinstalling it... they did it to me way back and i was at their mercy. they're pushing to see what the market will bear pricewize—completely unethical.

[Terri_Stevens]

You are getting totally paranoid with this. Nobody is lying to you or trying to make some commercial gain. You are valued as a customer but Adobe will survive without your business and has absolutely no need to be deceptive as it values its good name. In the age of alternative facts it is a real problem trying to help people like you.

[Stone-Rogers]

They may survive but, an antitrust suit along with a class action would make even the most monopolistic company sit back on their heels.

Some in this thread have said the nags are because the software is becoming incompatible with the computer and pointing fingers at the computer. I have not updated my system in some time, (a couple of months at least) and just starting getting this nag last week. So, that's not the issue.

Furthermore, the very screen generated by Adobe checking out my software says, "Pass" and is blank on the tampering yet, when questioned about this, the Adobe reps say their screens show otherwise and don't send screen caps. Another thing, when pressed for the invoice from my purchase, they said last night they could not see it yet, this morning another person could, (along with serial numbers).

I'm not a person to see the Boogy Man behind every bush but, this is a bit out of the ordinary. I paid for my software. That should be good enough. Adobe has and always had proof of purchase. It's in their system.

It would be different if CC was something better than CS 5/5.5/6 but, it's not really.

[debwarr]

Then put it in writing Terri. No one at Adobe will do that. Guarantee me that you'd have me up in an hour if I go to uninstall and reinstall my adobe software and I have proof of my legal serial number. You know, I've freaking BEEN there. On the phone with Adobe for a week with legal software that would NOT reinstall. That's not paranoia... that's first-hand experience.

[debwarr]

Same here Stone, I have NOT updated my mac OS software in a while. It doesn't need anything right now. The nag is new and every 15 minutes. If all you ACPs would just take this up to the decision maker who decided to target legal adobe users and accuse them of pirating, you too would know what's going on. Right now, you're just reading a blanket policy statement. I'm not sure you've ever been on the other end of the stick of your company's greed.

[Terri_Stevens]

Hello Deb and Stone-Rogers,
First of all sorry for the problems you are currently experiencing with your Adobe software. There are a few things you need to know:
1) The forum here is largely a user to user forum. Anyone who actually works for Adobe has 'Staff' under their picture/avatar. So although I am an ACP and have a few perks because of that, I don't work for Adobe and have no reason to show any bias towards you in their favour, in fact Adobe expect us to help you not defend them. Looking at the people who have responded so far it looks as if everyone who has commented is also just an experienced end user and not staff.
2) The screen you are seeing is the result of an Adobe anti-piracy initiative, but it is not being downloaded -it is actually a service running in the background on your Mac. This service initially was trialled with Acrobat and last Summer was extended to all Adobe products. It is even present in Creative Cloud 2017. The service was delivered to your computer via an update. I don't know which one but that's where it came from. The service works by looking at your serial number and performing a calculation from which it can tell if the serial has been issued by Adobe and not generated by a piracy tool called a keygen. I'm pretty convinced you believe your serial is genuine-as you would be pretty stupid complaining here otherwise, The trouble is lots of people innocently buy Adobe software from non-authorized sources like eBay where nine times out of ten the software is pirated. Amazon I think is authorized when you buy direct, but not through the third party agents. So the first question has to be where did you get the software? Stone seems to have an Adobe invoice I know. The second question is have you had Adobe check your serial number? If not you can use the chat console on the link below. It can sometimes be busy but the tech does work for the company and unlike me has access to the customer database.

https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html?step=PHSP-PHXS_downloading-installing-setting-up_licensing-acti...Contact Customer Care
Once you are sure the serial is genuine we can look at the other thing the Genuine Software Integrity Service does to check for piracy. The service examines key Adobe files on your computer and looks to see if they have been tampered with by a process called reverse engineering. The most common way to pirate Adobe software is in fact a direct replacement of a key dynamic linked library file. I am not certain which Mac OS you are using. Some of the other guys are talking about El Capitan and Sierra so can you confirm what you are using? As John T Smith has tried to point out, CS6 and earlier were written years ago when El Cap and Sierra were just items on a memo pad in the future planning department at Apple-some testing was probably done by Adobe with CS6 on these two operating systems, but nothing extensive and certainly no fixes or patches will have been written for these OS's This has a serious consequence. Modern operating systems are innately more security conscious than Yosemite and earlier. It is perfectly possible that El Cap and Sierra have files requiring higher permissions than was needed before-as CS6 doesn't know that then it may not have access to key configuration files which would look to  the  Software Integrity Service as if the product had been tampered with. The suggestion to use the Adobe Cleanup tool followed by a reinstallation is a good one. I understand you believe Adobe can block you reinstalling and you are partly right- there is a mechanism, but it's not there to stop a reinstall rather than to prevent installation on multiple computers. Simply put when you had a problem before , that occurred because you did not deactivate your CS6 . You will find under the Help menu of Adobe apps an option to 'deactivate' When you deactivate Adobe registers that serial number is not installed on a machine. When you reinstall that serial it is determined as valid, but if you don't deactivate Adobe thinks you are trying to use a serial twice and makes life difficult. Adobe can reset your activation count from their end and that is what the tech who helped you before did to make your CS6 work. I would therefore suggest trying a reinstall using the cleanup tool. If necessary the activation count can be reset again.

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

You may find that if you contact Customer Care on the link above a tech may do the reinstall for you using Remote Desktopping. However I'm not sure how much technical support you qualify for with CS6 which is now discontinued.

Before doing that you might like to try this:

The popup you are seeing is the result of a service on your Mac. If you open Activity Monitor you should see it running. I am running Windows but it should be similar on a Mac. Try closing the Adobe Genuine Software Integrity Service and see if the popup goes away

I'm not a Mac person, but on Windows you can disable services and I suspect you can do the same on a Mac-so try disabling the Adobe Genuine Software Integrity Service like below.

The popup you are seeing is supposed to be annoying as they want you to properly licence, so the above will probably not work as it is too easy, but you never know it might. I suspect though the reinstall route or maybe downgrading the OS might be the true solution.

Best of luck

Terri

[Stone-Rogers]

Thank you @Terri for taking the time to put this together.

However, at this time, I do not trust Adobe one single bit to honor my purchase.

The first call to Adobe should have cleared things up right away. All I should have had to give Adobe was my serial number for CS. From there they could have looked up my entire account and verified the purchase. Instead, the Adobe representative and her supervisor did not bother to look up my purchase record and basically accuse me of having "tampered" software. The supervisor suggested that I uninstall and reinstall the software and if that didn't work, he could make me an attractive discount for CC.

My second call to Adobe, I had my purchase number. The agent confirmed that my software was legitimate. He said he would escalate the ticket and have the nag screen stopped. The process would take 24-48 hours and I would stop seeing the pop up nag. I was again told to uninstall and reinstall the software.

72 Hours later, I still have the popup nag. My third call, the agent said he would deescalate the ticket. He again, suggested that I uninstall and reinstall the software.

Adobe broke this. Adobe needs to fix it.

I'm not sitting on the phone for 5 hours to resolve this issue. I'll spend 5 hours consulting with a legal expert to explore my options before that.

[Terri_Stevens]

Hiya

going down the legal route could cost you quite a bit. Why not try what Deb did and contact the Better Business Bureau Better Business Bureau: Start With Trust® they got Adobe to fix it in 24 hours

I'm in England and they don't operate here , but in the Backroom Forum, the American guys say they are well known in the US . From Deb's post it sounds as if Adobe remote desk-topped to her machine and reinstalled the software, but what seemed to fix it was the new serial number they issued. If you told the tech that and maybe pointed them to this thread they could try a new serial straight away and that shouldn't take five hours. To me all this suggests there is something wrong with the Adobe validation tool. I don't think it can be that common as there are thousands of people still using CS6 and earlier, but even a small number of cases looks bad.

I have been raising this in the Backroom forum where people from Adobe hang out , but I don't think the actual policy makers visit these forums. It is wrong though that failing the validation test immediately is accepted as a sign the software is illegal as your case and Deb show the system is currently flawed and I fully understand someone resenting being called dishonest .

Hope you can get it resolved without expense.

[Guest]

Stopping the service worked for me. It's ended the pop up for now.

[catherines89851673]

CS6, running Win7. Started with Photoshop 4 in 1996. All legit. All disks. I refuse to pay $$ per month/annual for photoshop.  It started today.  Read thru all the messages here. tried a few things. One commenter mentioned its with the browser delivering the pop ups.  So I went "off-line" and opened CS6 without any internet connection.  No pop ups.   So if any of you folks can use your adobe products without an internet connection, here's a work around.

[Stone-Rogers]

I called Adobe on my way into work this morning.

I gave them the case number from last night and told the rep that I had my order number from Adobe for my CS5 software. I gave that to him, he put me on hold.

He came back and said yes, there was a record of my purchase and the NAG screen should disappear within 24-48 hours.

I asked why the former rep did not look up my purchases he said he did not know since he could see my proof of purchase on his screen.

Adobe is running some kind of end around to get users of legacy software to uninstall the old software. When that fails, then, you will have no choice but move to CC. Of course, that is just me thinking out loud and may not be the case at all.

[leehrose]

I too am having a "Non-Genuine Software issue.   This just started to happen to a licensed, transferred copy of CS6.   I have been using this copy since Adobe validated the license and allowed the software to be installed as valid twice since the transfer in Sept 2014.  It was originally purchased on Ebay in the original box.  Going back to the seller 2 1/2 years ago is not an option.    I'm disgusted with Adobe having validated the serial and software several times until this week.   I can't help but think it's an obvious play at getting more people to upgrade to CC Cloud.   Since my license "Passed" on all the components of CS6 and show blanks in the tampering field of their "Non-Genuine Software" landing page, I called the number.   The (Indian) CSR asked for my email on my Adobe ID and then informed me that although the license was valid, that this was "Tampered Software".   I asked for a letter with some proof that this is tampered software and why it has been working fine and validated by Adobe 4x since Sept.   They sent me a "Cased Closed" notice.    Anyone up for a class action suit?

[Beverley Gray]

Hi leehrose

I would suggest you contact the team again for further assistance as the first call was disconnected.

Kind regards

Bev

[Stone-Rogers]

Earlier in the week I was contacted by Adobe. The person repeated the same mantra uninstall/reinstall.

We set up a time for Adobe to contact me and we could go over the issue via screen share. It was agreed to do this Friday between 2 and 4 my time.

I got another call from the same person at 4:30 Friday afternoon. He said he would issue another serial number and the Adobe software support person would call me back to work on the issue within 20 minutes.

I wrapped up my business and scurried back home as quickly as I could. I want to get this taken care of as quickly as possible.

I have not received the new serial number and, at 19:15, (my time) I got an email from Milton saying they tried to call but they were getting an "engaged tone"-I guess that's a busy signal. My phone never rang and I had it with me until I went to bed.

Several times Adobe employees have set the expectations to get this matter resolved. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. they have failed to deliver.

[Terri_Stevens]

Stone-Rogers  wrote

I have not received the new serial number

I got an email saying they tried to call but they were getting an "engaged tone

My phone never rang and I had it with me.

Hello,

when you say your phone never rang and you had it with you-are you talking about a mobile phone? Adobe will need the phone number of the line you use with your broadband connection as they will use your IP address for the remote desktop session. The approach they are taking is correct-a new serial number is likely to resolve your issue, but I don't think the idea was to send it to you, but rather have the engineer install it after removing your existing software.

[Stone-Rogers]

Adobe has my cell phone number. They have called me on it several times. It's the only phone number I have.

I'm not sure if you are in the US or not but, I have high speed internet through my local cable TV provider. There is no "home" phone here.

As far as IP address go, they need the IP address of my computer. Not a phone line. An IP address is assigned to a single device, (computer, VOIP phone, router, WAP, security camera, even refrigerators) that's connected to the internet. They need to establish a remote connection to my computer. There are several methods to do this. One is to use a client such as DameWare to remote in. They can also use WebEx, Jabber, or any host of other means including RDPing into my machine.

Believe me when I say this: I do this sort of work everyday- I'm a hands on Technical Project Manager/IT support analyst. It's my job to remote into servers, printers, phones and phone systems and client's desktops, (we don't have physical computers-only virtual desktops).

This is why I say, Adobe turned on these pop up nags. They can turn them off.

As far as the new serial number goes, I'm simply repeating what the Adobe person told me he was going to do. He said he was going to send me an email with the new serial number via email and that a technician would call me within 15-20 minutes and resolve the issue. He set the expectation and failed to deliver.

I got an email from a technician over 4 hours later stating they couldn't reach me.

[Beverley Gray]

Hi Stone-Rogers

Sorry for the frustrating experience.  I've asked the support team to follow up with you to resolve this.

Kind regards

Bev

[Claire Thomas]

Today I started getting the same alerts. I own my version of CS5 that I purchased from Adobe. I have my receipt. I am on a Mac using OS 10.9.5 and have not updated anything recently. Not even Acrobat.

How do I stop the pop ups? I really don't want to re-install as I am worried that it won't go well. And I certainly don't want to pay for support that I shouldn't need in the first place.

[Stone-Rogers]

You screen looks exactly like mine and I had the same issue.

I asked several times for Adobe to look up the proof of purchase since they can see everything else about my account. In the end, I found my PoP and gave it to them.

The only thing they would tell me to do is uninstall and reinstall the software.

My solution is, Adobe turns on this notice, they can turn it off.

[gfigueroa-cng]

It is happening to me too, since today. I even have CC subscription(paid by my work) and CS6(paid by myself). All the software appears as Pass and Pass subscription. Still, I get that pop up every time. I guess being in the US, the fastest solution would be to contact BBB, which is annoying as I'm a legal user that paid a lot in a supported reseller recommended by my university.

Can someone please check the software validation? it is as simple as if all the statuses are OK in the computer, then removed the warning! It is literally and if and a set of updates. You have created Adobe Suite and can't handle something affecting customers.

[Claire Thomas]

I used live chat and they told me my version is in fact good but that I would have to re-install the programs to stop the alerts. Thanks Adobe!!! Ad spyware to my programs without my knowledge, use it to make false claims and then make ME have to go through upload hell to fix it. Can't you just mark my program serial number as verified?