NO NORTON WANTED OR ALLOWED

Report · Sep 24, 2016

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO THE PROPER DEPARTMENT. YOUR SITE REFUSED TO GIVE ME AN EMAIL ADDRESS FOR ADOBE SUPPORT AND I REFUSE TO SIT ON HOLD FOREVER WAITING ON YOU TO ANSWER MY CALL.

Plainly stated, how dare you literally force me to install Norton when I install Flash Player? In case, the assumption was not clear enough, I am the person that ultimately decides what does and does not become installed on my computer.

I am very happy with the antivirus program I currently and have no intention of changing. Furthermore, there is no way I will permit Norton onto my hard drive to create havoc with my preferred program.

If you want to cheer on Norton, then, by all means, be my guest. But when you do not give me the choice of not allowing Norton to install, you are ramming something down my throat, and I NEVER take kindly to that.

Until you return my option to NOT install Norton when I install Flash Player, Flash Player will NOT be installed on any of the computers I own. Additionally, I will be informing everyone I know of your very communistic business decision. Let me know when we can install Flash Player ONLY.

Mark A. Martin

Report · Sep 26, 2016

The offers are not installed without permission. They display in the center of the download page and the user has the option to not accept the offers:

Certain ad-blockers and disabling JavaScript will hide the offers.

Report · Sep 26, 2016

Perhaps you're seeing a different. Version. The current one does not allow

you to delete Norton first.

Report · Sep 26, 2016

The screenshot is from this morning, as I posted it. What is the URL to the page you are going to?

Do you have any ad-blockers or JavaScript disabled?

Report · Sep 26, 2016

That is different from what I saw the other day.

Thanks for your help.

Have a great day!!

Report · Sep 27, 2016

A couple things:

Flash Player is a ubiquitous piece of software, and it's a popular target for impersonation.

Malware distributors create fake upgrade popups that take you to a random website, which distributes a real-enough looking copy of Flash Player. As security gets better on a technical level, humans are increasingly the weak link, and the bad guys are getting very good ad making compelling fakes.

We don't distribute Norton. We *do* distribute McAfee as an optional download.

If you really got Norton with your Flash Player distribution, it very unlikely that you downloaded it directly from us, and that the distribution was legit. I'm guessing you also got one or more other gifts that weren't included in the legitimate version. An unwanted copy of Norton is probably the least of your worries. That you have a virus scanner of dubious origin, which you can't uninstall is not a good sign.

If you're doing anything sensitive with this computer (banking, healthcare, etc), I'd highly recommend dropping it with your friendly IT tech (especially if it's your work machine and helpdesk is free), or at minimum, running a current, reputable anti-virus or anti-malware package, which you downloaded directly from the vendor. If you have a copy of the installer payload that you downloaded, uploading it to https://www.virustotal.com/ would also not be a bad idea.

If it was me personally, I'd take the "salt the earth" approach, wipe and reinstall the OS and everything else from pristine sources, and then invest in a good password manager. Once I had a machine I trusted again, I'd spend an afternoon adding secure passwords and two-factor authentication to everything that might help a bad guy steal my identity.

Just for anyone else that might be reading this thread:

Please always go directly to the software vendor's website or to the AppStore for your particular operating system. Don't click through links in email, or pop-ups in your browser. If you think the notification is legit, get out of the window, google the vendor or product you want, and install the update directly.