Adobe’s Updater destroys Mac OS X: trying to remove it, part 1

UPDATE: this technique didn’t work. I’m still trying to find something that does. One friend suggested hard-coding the address of all Adobe websites into your “hosts” file, and blocking them. This would prevent you from visiting Adobe’s sites – but would prevent the evil Adobe Updater trojan from downloading – but it will still keep TRYING to run. I want to kill the damn thing completely.

Adobe just doesn’t seem to get the message: the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader puts a NEW virus(*) on your desktop, and all the old methods for removing it … don’t work. I previously used this tip from 2010 to remove the virus, while still using the Adobe software installed on my machine, but it no longer works.

With OS X Lion, I’m now trying again with a new approach (through trial and error this seems it might work – but I’ll update this in a few months if the virus still hasn’t come back)

1. Open Finder
2. Search for “Adobe Updater”
3. Should be in an “Adobe Utilities” folder (if they had the chutzpah to call it “Adobe Viruses” I’d at least give them some credit for humour and outright shamelessness :))
4. Delete that app – move it to Trash
5. Empty the Trash (just in case it tries to run while hiding in the Trash – should be impossible, but with the back-door hacks Adobe’s already doing, you never know…)

(*) Adobe’s “Updater” has so far:

1. crashed my laptop (multiple times)
2. caused it to overheat to the point of hardware damage (laptop emits a screeching noise – that’s the hardware’s “emergency shutdown” warning)
3. stolen my internet bandwidth when I’m on 3G modem, costing me money, and preventing me from using my own machine

This app cannot be disabled, the web is full of people complaining and begging Adobe to get rid of it, it’s installed secretly (the user is not informed it exists, let alone asked if they want it), and it has NOTHING TO DO WITH the actual app I installed.

What do you reckon? To me, that sounds closer to a virus than anything else. I don’t for a moment believe that Adobe is unaware of the amount of hatred it instils in their customers…