Why?

[Mortimer-H]

I would lioke to know WHY the BEEP you installed a third pary program with out my permission? Installing ANYTHING except flash is trojan/virus like behaver.

You want to get in bed with the like of McCaffy that's YOUR choice do NOT force YOUR choice on other people. and more importantly DO NOT INSTALL 3RD PARTY STUFF WITHOUT THE SYS ADMINS PERMISSION!!!!!!!!!!!!

[AngryBirds888]

I 100% agree with this poster. I am ANGERED and have lost respect for Adobe. Until Adobe stops making work for users of its products in terms of undoing what you are abusing your relationship with your customers by doing things to their computers without their permission, I will take every opportunity to slam company, and if I had a choice I would stop using your products. Rot in heck.

[chris.campbell]

Please see this FAQ for details on how our installation process works and why we offer optional third party offers.

Flash Player installation and update questions and answers

[Mortimer-H]

The problem is Chris Cambell It was NOT "offered" it was INSTALLED WITH OUT MY PERMISSION!!!!!! I for one don't care if you "OFFER"  the moon, but FORCE installing CRAPWARE is against everything I have ever been taught about the way varius companys do business..

When I download a file like flash player the ONLY thing I expect in that file is the INSTALLER for FLASH. If you wish to "offer" 3rd party junk that's your choice but make DAMN sure that it's an OFFER, with the options to NOT download and or NOT install. That is what an OFFER is.

What this installer did was not an offer.

[chris.campbell]

As noted in the FAQ, the intended behavior is to always display the "opt-out" page first.  Any other behavior is a bug and something we would want to fix.  Unfortunately, after tens of thousands of tests, we've never been able to reproduce this behavior.  If you can reproduce the problem where we do not display the opt-out page first please let us know.  I'd very much like to see this occur so we can address it asap.

[Mortimer-H]

Well I suggest that you go back and test some more, or better yet DON'T DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!

This is the sequance that happened on my machine today.

Turned on the machine (of course)

Afetr the machine was booted it displayed the update advisery for the flash player

Told machine to update it

After it downloaded I told it to install

AFTER I gave my firewall permission to allow this program (Including filing a false report action since the hueristic scanner didn't like you (I can see why now)) it proceeded to install Mccraopy and the flash player, NO "opt" out.

So if you've had "tens of thousands" of complaints on this behavior, wouldn't that suggest that something someplace is broken and needs fixing? Maybe even (perish the thought) haveing the software engineers EARN there salery and re-build the installer, only this time LEAVE OUT the 3rd party junk, and re-place it with a desktop shortcut that opens a INTERNET LINK to said 3rd party. That way you still get your nickles and dimes for pushing the junkware, but \allows the end user to decide what they want/don't want on there machines.

Also if you people are doing things like this with your flash I would really blow a gasket if you were doing it with yoiur premium software.

[chris.campbell]

I understand your position and I've communicated that to the team in charge of our online installers.  The "tens of thousands" comment was how many times we've tested this workflow internally, not external complaints.

Was the update advisory the same one pictured in the screenshot I provided in the FAQ?  When you "told machine to update it", was this on a web page?  What did the page look like?  Did you see anything like the pages shown in the section "What should I expect when I receive notification that Flash Player has an update available?"

Flash Player installation and update questions and answers

[pwillener]

I also wondere why?  Why this has never happened to me?

I have used Flash Player since version 6, and have installed and updated it on dozens of machines - manual updates, automatic updates, ...

I really wonder what you are doing differently than me?  A sequence of screenshots may help to determine what is actually happening when you experience that.

[Mortimer-H]

I can't tell you why and I am not going to un-install just to re-install for screen shots. This update was the first thing I did on the machine, and I have described the seaquance the best I can in a earlier post.

It may have had something to do with my firwall blocking it at first due to someting that it's hurestic (sp) scanner didn't like plus it being the first time the installer was run with this firewall it needed permision to access the net. Again it could be something else entirly.

The best way to prevent something like this from happening again is to put a I-Net short cut on the desktop. That way there is no need for a "opt" outscreen or having a addtional installer imbedded in the flash installer.

[AngryBirds888]

I started to install the update, saw that it was installing Google Toolbar - which for the record I have had on my computer in the past and have uninstalled, and although I have nothing especially against Google (use Chrome and GMail regularly), I KNOW that I do not want GT - and stopped the installation, thinking I must have missed the option to not install the Google products. I downloaded and ran the Flash Player installer from the Adobe site a second time and still did not see any "opt-out screen." I am not saying it wasn't there; I am saying that I went out of my way to look for it and find it and did not.

What is needed is a clear statement that the Google products will be installed by default and here is how to opt out if you don't want them. Or better, an offer and opportunity for the user to take explicit action if the user wants to try them. When the default behavior is to install them and the customer must opt out if he does not want them, that is still an abuse of Adobe's relationship with the user. The user's motivation is purely to update Flash Player and Adobe's obligation is to make it easy to do that without adding unnecessary baggage or burden like checking boxes to avoid something the user had no notion of doing or allowing to happen.

[pwillener]

You have two options to prevent optional software from being installed

a) uncheck the checkbox on the download page

b) download the offline installer(s) from http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/installation-problems-flash-player-windows.html#main-pars_hea...

[AngryBirds888]

OK, thanks. Will try to be more observant next time. Still dislike the whole thing.