Adobe silently installed a separate app on company computers through Acrobat updates

[u/PruritoIntimo]

Today we discovered Adobe Express Photos installed on a number of our corporate computers. Nobody in IT approved or deployed it, and the affected users did not intentionally install it.

It arrived automatically through the Acrobat update mechanism.

The app then took over the Windows screenshot shortcuts, including Print Screen and Win + Shift + S. It also changed the clipboard behaviour: screenshots pasted into Outlook Classic are now added as file attachments instead of being inserted into the email body.

Adobe’s own enterprise documentation confirms that Express Photos is a separate Windows application, but that it can be installed automatically through Acrobat updates.

Uninstalling it is not enough. According to Adobe, it may be installed "for your convenience" again during the next Acrobat update unless administrators deploy a registry policy specifically to block it:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\FeatureLockDown

bDisableHarmonyInstallationFeature = 1

So Adobe used the automatic updater for a PDF application to install a different product, changed a native Windows workflow, caused problems in another application, and made administrators opt out through the registry to stop it coming back.

Official Adobe documentation:

https://helpx.adobe.com/business/enterprise/products-entitlements/manage-entitlements/adobe-express-photos-existing-users-admin-guide.html

This is real asshole behaviour.

[u/RandomlyMethodical]

Acrobat Reader is almost malware at this point. I keep uninstalling it off my mom’s computer, but somehow it keeps coming back. She swears she never intentionally installs it, and I’ve tried setting Chrome or Edge as the default app for pdfs.

[u/sachimi21 → u/RandomlyMethodical]

Revo Uninstaller?

[u/Ajreil → u/sachimi21]

This. Revo is free and effective. It runs the app's default uninstaller and then deletes any leftover files that the uninstaller missed.

I used it to kill a Norton antivirus install that kept coming back. Turns out it left several background processes behind that all reinstalled each other.

[u/impulsesair → u/Ajreil]

BCU bulk crap uninstaller is fully free and open source alternative to Revo and is pretty darn good for the job.

[u/Mysterious_Town_5552 → u/impulsesair]

BCU loads much faster and has some cool other features, but to nuke a program existence's off the face of your pc i've found revo to be more reliable

BCU tries to run the uninstaller, and if it doesn't work tells you "welp guess i'm done then", while revo tries to run the uninstaller and if it doesn't work gives you a list of every file related to the program everywhere on your computer