>Had a support call from a client yesterday. All of a sudden:
>
>- Home page in all installed browsers was changed and could not be changed back
>- Antivirus protection was set to something he didn't recognize, and changes were disabled
>- He kept getting popup notifications in the System Tray, that problems were detected on his computer and the System Tray application could "fix them"
>
>Turned out he installed an Adobe Acrobat Reader update without un-checking the default opted-in extra garbage:
>
>- Home pages were all changed to Yahoo!
>- Norton 360 (trial? who knows) was installed, Windows Defender disabled and ability to change security software settings was disabled
>- The popup was apparently "Norton One Stop", whatever that is (hadn't heard of it before)
>
>I find it incredible that the default installation of an Adobe Acrobat Reader update makes changes to a user's machine that are indistinguishable from a malware attack. This is no longer merely annoying, it's costing real people real time and money to mitigate.
>
>It's a shame Adobe has to be considered the gold standard for PDF handling. Alternatives such as Foxit are looking more attractive all the time.

I would drop Adobe Reader immediately except that I tried to replace Adobe some years ago with Foxit but then the PDF files would not open inside a browser control contained inside a window. Does this work now, can anyone confirm?

It is pathetic that Adobe do this. I can only imagine Norton pay them a lot of money.

[UPDATE] - Just uninstalled Adobe and re-tried Foxit and, wow, it now also supports opening PDF inside a browser so it does now also open a PDF inside a IE control inside a window. Cool !