US sues Adobe for “deceiving” subscriptions that are too hard to cancel
www.theverge.com
The DOJ accuses Adobe of trapping users in subscriptions.
  • datavoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    Somewhere on my PC I have a several page long rant about how many government websites in Canada require you to pay for an Adobe subscription in order to sign an “official” PDF.

    Why the hell isn’t there a better option for filling out legally required, government mandated forms than giving a private corporation money? This bothers me so fucking much.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
      0·
      11 days ago

      Feeling daring? If you have to buy the software anyway, invoice the government department the price of the software.

      • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        My mom worked in accounting for the local government. You’d be surprised how many invoices are getting paid without double checking

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
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      11 days ago

      You can’t fill it out with Firefox? I think pdf.js (which Firefox uses) supports PDF forms.

      • datavoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        Nope, I’ve tried every other option I could think of. All the browsers, a few websites, ms office products, non ms office products, some graphic design tools… to Adobe’s credit they did a great job making sure people had to pay

        • dan@upvote.auEnglish
          0·
          11 days ago

          Ahh, it’s probably using some proprietary features that only exist in Adobe products.

          I’m not sure if they still sell it, but Adobe used to have a suite of form tools where the person filling out the form had to use Adobe Acrobat (it used some non-standard PDF form features), and the company collecting the form repeonses had to use software built on top of Adobe ColdFusion (which costs thousands of dollars per server). They really tried to lock people in to their form ecosystem.

    • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      What’s even more crazy, is Adobe has a system called something like “docusign”, where you can just fill the document in in-browser.

      I’m fortunate that I haven’t yet hit a form I couldn’t just edit in GIMP!

    • Septimaeus@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      I’m curious about this. If demonstrable, many could sue for damages.

      For these government websites, what is the typical user workflow?

      1. An embedded Adobe applet (e.g. fill, sign, and submit on the government website)
      2. Token-based API (e.g. redirect or spawn child window/tab, user fills and signs on adobe site, user returned to government site).
      3. Something else, such as a document upload button with server-side validation for digital signing?
  • answersplease77@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    these cocksuckers were charging my 70-yr-old computer-illetrate mom nearly $80 a month because “she wanted to be able to open pdf on her laptop”, and then once I found out and tried to cancel this pro subscription which she had, they forced us to pay a $200 cancelation fee which amounts to the remaining months until the end of the year. Adobe came pre installed and all she did was click on yes, yes, yes after the trail period finished. It’s a predetory behavior from a scummy company. I will never forgive them for this.

    • bean@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      That is peak shittiness. Thank goodness your Mum has you to advocate, and I shudder to think of how many others don’t and were shafted or continue to be shafted.

      Their competition for PDF Reader; Foxit, jacked their prices up considerably this last year too. It used to be an affordable alternative. They too got greedy (I assume since Adobe was getting away with it!) and have lost a considerable amount of customers in both the consumer end-users and the business side.

      PDF becomes increasingly more used and ‘standard’ with the fracturing of ability to edit them or do ‘advanced’ tasks like merging multiple PDFs.

      There are some alternatives which are free but also either Freemium or just plain questionable in their usage. I don’t want to trust some random company and I don’t want to be nickel and dimed for basic features like merge.

      I spent a long time testing and trying tools. Sadly nothing as comprehensive as what Acrobat offers, but not an option at their pricing. Same with Foxit. I use PDFsam for some basic merge stuff. An interesting project is also Stirling PDF. but pdfsam is like Freemium and Stirling I’m pretty requires docker and it’s also not in all languages.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      I know it sucks for the call center personnel to have to listen to people yelling at them, but I’ve had multiple of such companies that were so shitty that the only way to get anything fixed was to keep making people cry until finally someone would push you to a supervisor. Well at enough of them and they will either fix the issue or push you through to their supervisors who will do anything to stop the yelling.

      I got to the point where I’ll just make then cry because it’s the only option left to get any normal responsible behavior from companies. I’ll have to call 20 times perhaps but that’s what I’ll do then

    • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      How did it get her credit card info if she only clicked “yes” boxes? Or was it linked to some other payment system that was set up on her system somehow (MS or Apple App Store or something)?

      • JonEFive@midwest.socialEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        There’s a reason scam artists target the elderly. If a box on the computer screen says “put payment info here” then who are they to argue with the box?

        • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          10 days ago

          Adobe is worse than scammers. Scammers at least have the self realization that they are scamming. Adobe will steal your money and huff on the fumes that they are providing a valuable service by letting people open PDFs.

          I recently downloaded their PDF reader (because it’s the only app which allows for digitally signing a document with a visible cryptographic signature) and it’s 400 MB in size. In no world should a PDF reader be that large.

          • AeroLemming@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            10 days ago

            Firefox can open PDFs and I’m not sure about the desktop versions, but the Android version is 117MB.

            • xavier666@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              10 days ago

              There are hundreds of Windows and Linux apps which can open PDF, but so far only Adobe’s version is the only one which can attach a digital signature. I normally use Zathura on Linux which is like a 5 MB maybe. It’s tiny, very configurable and JUST a pdf reader.

        • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          11 days ago

          People on Lemmy, who kinda are on the upper echelons of technical aptitude, forget that the average user is really fucking dumb. Work a stint in level 1 IT and you will get the absolute wildest head smacking issues ever.

          And companies capitalize on that by making it incredibly easy to give them money.

          • answersplease77@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            11 days ago

            My sister who is stupid with computers is a successful consultant with phd in her field lol.

            I’m not exaggerating to say 90% of people in the world treat PCs as non-intresting tools do their job. They have privacy-nightmare settings on their phones and never change the default apps or settings on their PC. That’s how tech companies earn their billions

  • Jaybob32@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    I decided to try out the new version about a year ago. I had a monthly charge of about $26 I think it was. After about 3-4 months and not really using it, I cancelled a few days before it would renew for another month. $50 early cancellation fee? Wtf do you need to cancel a few mins before or it’s early cancellation? Adobe fucking sucks ass.

    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      That’s the trick, it’s always early cancellation, there is no allowed time to stop sending them money.

  • Jesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    It’s so refreshing to actually have my tax dollars starting to fund consumer protection again.

    If Trump gets in office again, it’s back to backsliding. Because apparently consumer protection is “big government” or some such shit.

  • JimVanDeventer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    This is beside the point, but it might help some people in the short term: I was able to switch my subscription plan without penalty and then cancel immediately without the cancellation fee. Maybe that still works.

  • penquin@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    Any corporation that does should just go bankrupt. Seriously, will you live fine without them? Of course. Will society continue to exist? Of course. Fuck these fucking scums.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    I’m calling it now:

    In other news Adobe forced to pay 0.001% if what they earn every day from subscriptions and still find loopholes allowing them to continue business as usual, with the US government sticking their thumbs up their ass because they can’t make an example of Adobe too soon or the bribes… I mean donations from lobbyists representing large companies will dry up.

  • Restaldt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    Hell yeah.

    Fuck adobe.

    I submitted a complaint about this exact thing to one of the government sites so im going to pretend I had a part in this