Why is Adobe installing McAfee software by stealth?

[matsig]

I cannot understand why Adobe is installing McAfee software by stealth, and infuriating users like myself?

I cannot understand the mindset in a supposedly clever organisation that could imagine that this is OK?

It is fundamentally both deceitful and patronising.

[chriswade-evans]

Thanks Mike

I don't expect my comments to make any difference. Just venting. I'm off to hunt down those preferences anyway.

Chris

[rmm200]

A McAfee stealth install slipped by me this morning. I have been fighting this for years, and it never fails to infuriate me.

I will not have any McAfee product on any computer I own, and Adobe's complicity in this will keep me from ever buying another Adobe product.

There are other choices out there.

I know Adobe could care less about customer's opinions, and does not monitor customer forums, but at least this forum gives me a place to vent.

[rabidx]

I didn't want this junk the past 500 hundred times!!!!  wtf  why would i want it now??!

stop including it

[brobbeh]

The first post of that one thread alone has 5k+ views. It must be a lot of money for Adobe to make it worth damaging their brand name like that.
I honnestly don't get it. I'm always careful and I'm almost sure there was no check box at all this time, I ll have to retrace my steps carefully next time cause I'm pretty sure that'd be not legal. Really sad to see how low they are going.

[hellopaul4]

I have been using Adobe software for decades, and generally love their products, despite their high price tags. But, for fuxake, making an extra few $$ by installing malware on my machine is just shite! Come on, Adobe, you're better than that!

(I updated Adobe Flash Player, and there were NO 'opt out' options. I managed to force quit the installer after it had updated Flash and before the McAfee install completed. Who knows what junk it's left on my machine).

[Guest]

I had the same thing this morning, Adobe update request box came up when I booted up this morning, no mention whatsoever of any attached third party bullshit.  Then proceeded to show install progress for flash AND McAfee "Plus" (what's the 'plus'?  Plus useless shit you know we didn't want?).

Cancelled the install, but it'd already shotgunned in.  Now scrubbing out every last reminder of that filth I can find.

...Just a little WTF Adobe, as far as I'm aware, it's NOT LEGAL to install 3rd party software without an 'untick' option.

Thanks for wasting my time this morning cleaning out the shit you took in my registry, and f#@k you very much.  Back into the 'not-trusted' group for you, no more auto updates.

[taveuni13]

Yeah, almost got caught up in this racket too.  No option not to install McAfee this time around. Cancelled and won't update until they fix this.  No one that knows anything wants that junk on their computer.

[ladeecache]

After Firefox 30 forced an update, this morning, by disallowing Adobe Flash 17 (Win7) from running due to security issues (it gave me the option to disregard, but that became tiresome after the 5th time), I dutifully went to update the player. I always prefer a standalone installer, looked for one, but didn't easily find one for individual users (finding ones only for developers). Downloaded the quick installer. After initializing the installation, I checked the "do not automatically update" option, kept my eyes open for opt-in/opt-out for ride-alongs and watched the update/install process. And was horrified to see McAfee download and install, and was too stunned to stop the process.

I uninstalled everything. Interesting note: the original download file had disappeared from my saved location and was NOT in trash. Wassup with that?? Anyway: redownloaded the installer and installed, waiting to stop the McAfee download/install. It never happened. The second install ONLY installed Flash. Go figure.

Adding to the rants.... this kind of underhanded stealthy "product enhancement [not]" is insulting and infuriating. It's my flipping bandwidth that _ I _ pay for, and to assume I'm not running my own AV software is just plain insulting. P*isser, for sure!!

[struthious_cheeseburger]

yeah, I just installed adobe acrobat reader dc, and it installed mcafee on my computer. It's happened before, so I was curious why this would happen. I knew adobe didn't get hacked with trojan programs or anything, because the installer explicitly shows an install progress bar for the mcafee crap. After looking at a few forums, I decided to take a look and see if disabling my ad-blocker would fix it (they said it would), and I got this:

I don't know about you, but I don't see any options for not installing mcafee (the ad-blocker is the ad-on on the far left, next to the star to bookmark pages, and hangouts). You can see it's greyed out, which means the site is whitelisted. It shows up orange when it's active, and yes, before you ask, I did refresh the page to see if it made a difference. It did show (for like a half a second before the page fully loaded) instead of About:, it showed Additional offer: or something like that (maybe that's where the option to not install mcafee is?).

This post is kinda weird to read, I know (I'm not the best writer), but as far as I know, there's NO WAY TO NOT INSTALL MCAFEE WITH MY ADOBE DOWNLOAD. Not only am I good with computers so I almost never get viruses, but if I ever do I always just download malwrebytes, run a scan, then delete it.

Adobe, you need to stop doing this. I know I'm not the only one who's pissed off about this. I also know nothing's going to change because of one post, but my hope is that tons of people will get pissed off and something will change.

Thanks a ton.

P.S. Those other tabs that are open are for a school assignment. I don't usually search that kind of stuff lol

[jeromiec83223024]

There's a bunch of logic that determines whether or not you get a bundled offer (your browser/os combination, whether or not you already opted into that offer, etc.) and all of that happens in a different part of the company.  My focus is Flash Player, so I'm not deep into the internals.

In your instance, there was no optional offer.  I'm assuming that's because you had picked up McAfee from the Reader installation.  Since there was no option to get a bundled offer, you should have been given a payload with just Flash Player (and it sounds like that was the case).  Without details on the payload you received (filename and hash, ideally), I don't know 100% for sure that you got the expected payload, but I'm pretty confident that you did.

If you were to get an offer for an optional download, it would look like this:

[linsayp]

I tried making a post - but couldn't. Also replying to other posts doesn't seem possible.

I've posted to Facebook the following:

I'd like Adobe to conform to the standard procedure every other software company does and have the default update screen have the default with installing McAfee "UNCHECKED".

Having multiple antivirus programs on a computer takes up unnecessary space and usually renders any A/V you have as useless meaning because of this blatantly deceptive setup your users, who have done nothing that should leave them exposed, ARE LEFT EXPOSED.

If it was possible for me to post on the Forum - I would put one there asking "Who WANTS McAfee to be forced upon them.

And you would then see that no-one wants it.

Surely there are enough negative posts (without a response from you) saying this VERY CLEARLY.

Open your eyes & ears guys.

[Robert Mc Dowell]

mc afee is not checked by default

[linsayp]

What universe are you in?
EVERY update I can remember has the "optional offer" pre-selected.

If you know how to stop this there are many others aside from I who would love to know how to stop it!

[Robert Mc Dowell]

stay calm... on my side it's unchecked so maybe there are different behavior on each visitor.

so just uncheck the checkbox and you're ok.... if you forgot it so just uninstall mc afee from the app manager and reboot.

[linsayp]

Robert I've unchecked it & installed numerous times over the last few years.

My point is:
Having it pre-selected to install it is devious at best. The only reason for this is for Adobe to receive a commission for the downloads through this method.
Then to back it up with the next screen having pre-selected to install all updates automatically (which will continue to install McAfee) only adds to & compounds the deception.

There are MANY posts complaining about this & Adobe NEVER respond & have done nothing to rectify it.

I have paid A/V & don't need something that can only render that ineffective foisted upon me so Adobe can earn a few dollars thank you very much.

[Robert Mc Dowell]

Adobe is a for profit corporation, like google, facebook and twitter (among others), so some are showing advertising or making data mining some are showing a checkbox to install an antivirus. nothing wrong...

[linsayp]

So you think it's O.K. to engineer something in such a way that it will most likely cause peoples virus protection to fail?

I for one don't.

Posting ads is one thing, this underhanded, sneaky way of trying to fool many (the elderly & others who are not that savvy) into installing something they don't need nor want should not be tolerated & I'm putting my hand up to say I don't like it!

[Robert Mc Dowell]

I'm a simple user like you, and never had such kind of issue. btw what's really your issue beside of you don't like it?

[linsayp]

What happens if you have more than one antivirus program on computer?

No. We highly recommend that only one antivirus program be installed on yourcomputer. ... Having more than one antivirus on the computer can cause many different issues. Often the most common issue being a confliction between the different antivirus programs causing your computer to become unprotected.Jan 24, 2018

Is it ok to have more than one antivirus installed? - Computer Hope

What happens if you install two antivirus?

so use one at a time and keep it updated. You can't have two antivirus programs monitoring your computer at the same time because they conflict and cause your PC to crash. ... Yes, if you install two antivirus software in your system, the antiviruswill detect each other as virus threats.

Effects of having two antivirus programs installed

Antivirus programs do not usually play well together, and running two at the same time will often lead to one singling out the other as a virus, or in some cases, even cause file corruption. Plus, running two apps can really eat up system resources.Apr 3, 2012

Need I go on?

just google
is it bad to run multiple antivirus programs

[jeromiec83223024]

Given the fact that this thread is now attracting abusive and unrelated comments, I'm going to lock it.  Thanks for the feedback.

Here's my general advice:

For better or worse, the bundled offers pay the bills.  I've posted extensive explanations which you can find in my activity history, but the bottom line is that while Flash Player is distributed free, Adobe is a for-profit corporation.

While I'd love to live in a post-scarcity Start Trek style meritocracy, that day seems very remote.  In the meantime, we don't have the luxury of just spending money without generating income, and maintaining and distributing Flash Player is a tremendously complex and expensive undertaking.

At the end of the day, we pay business experts to research, identify and implement the most effective business strategy, and this is hands-down the approach that yields the best results.  It’s also the case that those bundled offers keep me employed, and it would be disingenuous to just blame it on the business people.

The truth is, a sufficient number of people find enough value in the bundled offers that they ultimately spend money with those sponsors, who in turn see value in partnering with us, which in turn keeps us supplied with engineers, servers, bandwidth and coffee.  It’s an imperfect solution for an imperfect world.

That said, you actually *do* have a few options at your disposal in terms of avoiding this prompt:

1.) Enable automatic updates.

You do not get prompted for background updates.  We actually forego the revenue opportunity to ensure that you're always updated with the latest security patches.

2.) Use Google Chrome or Internet Explorer/Edge on Windows 8 and higher

These browser partners contribute directly to the Flash ecosystem in multiple ways, and distribute Flash Player as built-in components of their browsers.  There's nothing separate to download or install, and Flash Player is automatically kept updated via either the Chrome updater or Windows Update, respectively.

3.) Uninstall Flash Player

While probably not the optimal answer, you can always opt-out of participating in the ecosystem.

I've included links to our uninstallers below, for your convenience:

Uninstall Flash Player - Mac:

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-mac-os.html

Uninstall Flash Player - Windows:

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html