I recently selected a Flash Upgrade for my Windows computer and agreed to have the software installed on my PC. As part of this upgrade Adobe also installed McAfee software onto my computer without my knowledge. Nowhere in the installation screens or options was their any indication of this new software that would be installed. No warning, no option to select or deselect it, just a simple invite to upgrade to the latest version of the Flash user code.
In the past a respectful industry practice has been to include checkboxes for a user to agree before installing any new software onto their computer. This meant that on the upfront installation screen there were selection options to have new items added or not. With this latest Flash upgrade there is no option or choice and Adobe automatically installed McAfee, which is a practice that I find extremely unprofessional.
In the past Adobe was critisized for using their consumer software installations for installing other software. They changed their apprach and included permission check-boxes ot make it more customer friendly. I remember about ten years ago an instance when the Adobe installation even hijacked my browser homepage and replaced it with with their own promotional pages and which they took a lot of bad publicity. Now it would appear that Adobe has reverted back to that past practice or perhaps this is an isolated oversight.
I own commercial Adobe software that I have paid thousands of dollars for to develop content. My clients pay Adobe a significant amount of money to have Adobe software on their servers to serve up that content to internet users each day. Adobe makes their money by selling the server software and providing users the free browsers to be able to access that content. It is an unacceptable practice to have the public users download Adobe software and agree to their EULA only to later find out that Adobe installs completely unrelated software onto their computers without notifying the user or giving them the option to cancel the installation/upgrade if they don't want that other software. For me as a professional engineer I am concerned that we are developing content for clients that they rely on but then find out that their unsuspecting users and customers are being victimized by having unrelated software loaded onto their computers.
Can Adobe please respond to this discussion thread by answering two questions:
1. Is this a legal action in Canada for Adobe to install unauthorized software onto a users computer without their express permission?
2. Was this Flash upgrade installation of McAfee an unfortunate oversight that should have had the user warning/selection but ended up not having it?
As a professional user I feel it is important to know this as I am uncomfortable doing further deployments using these practices and will likely change our systems to use other players and code so as to avoid putting our internet users in a positon of having unexpected software installs being completed without their knowledge.
Thank you.
Barry
3
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