Why McAffee option in flash download?

[philseymour]

Why does Adobe insist on offering McAfee antvirus with their Flash upgrades? At least leave it UNTICKED instead of a rather subversive and stupid pre-selected part of the upload. Was someone having a fit of brain numbness when the dialogue box was created or is someone getting a kickback from McAfee?  Poor customer relations, Adobe!!

[C_F_McBlob]

"Was someone having a fit of brain numbness when the dialogue box was created or is someone getting a kickback from McAfee?"

It's the latter... sort of.

Adobe Reader, Flash Player, Shockwave and AIR are "no cost" to download, but that doesn't mean they're free. Adobe pays people to develop and update these apps that no one pays for, so they offset the costs by selling advertising to McAfee, Norton, Google etc. for the server hosting bandwidth and dev costs.  It's a pain in the *** but the alternative is you pay for each and every update... I don't want that. Pretty sure it wouldn't set too well with anyone else either.

[d_blitz]

It's absoluteley not OK to have the option preselected. That clearly is a method to palm something off on someone. It's OK to have an advertisment on the update page but no preselcted options. Yes the Reader generates development costs to Adobe but their business model is you pay for Acrobat and the Reader is for free.

[C_F_McBlob]

d.blitz wrote:

It's absoluteley not OK to have the option preselected. That clearly is a method to palm something off on someone. It's OK to have an advertisment on the update page but no preselcted options. Yes the Reader generates development costs to Adobe but their business model is you pay for Acrobat and the Reader is for free.

Buyer (or in this case free downloader) beware. The number of Acrobat users compared to Reader uses is a tiny fraction of a percent, if that. Over the weekend I installed Roxio Media Creator Suite and Corel WinDVD... two very expensive chunks of software.

BOTH of them had "preselected" installers for Google toolbar, McAfee and Norton "trials".
It isn't just Adobe, and you can complain till your fingers are worn completely down to nubs from all the typing. It ISN'T going to stop anytime soon.
The ONLY thing I take issue with is the "no opt out" install that occurs with some of the updates. It's not all of them, but I've witnessed the McAfee installing when there was no option to "uncheck it".

However, if people don't take the time to uncheck the box when it's presented to them... that's a different story. That's how 99% of all viruses are spread. People click something they didn't take the time to look at first, or they don't click something they should have unchecked. That's their "own damn fault" so to speak.

[d_blitz]

I am totaly aware that it's not just Adobe that's doing it this way but that doesn't make it a good thing. I'm just expressing my opinion on that pre-selected option method. Also I totally agree with you in that if people don't read but click too fast that's their "own ... fault". I for my part do read before I click but I find it annoying having to uncheck everytime. Again, I'm OK with advertising for third party software or to present a convenient install option but it really shouldn't be preselected.

[pwillener]

Also (and this not an excuse) many companies that offer free software do the same; somehow they must get some revenue for the development and maintenance of their free software.