Bogus Adobe employees sell fake PDF program

A series of e-mails purportedly sent by Adobe Acrobat Reader Support employees in which the users are urged to activate their “new Adobe PDF Reader” have been hitting inboxes worldwide.

According to Softpedia, the embedded link (www.adobe-download-center.com) redirects the users to another URL (www.pdf-new-2010-download.com), where a bogus program by the name of PDF Pro 2010 is offered on sale.

A hint that this might not be a legitimate offer comes from the fact that users are encouraged to download the file with a promise to receive a free copy of “the best ALL-IN-ONE Office Solution for Your PDF Files!”. It is safe to say that any company is unlikely to offer free PDF software along its paid one.

Also, it seems that a variant of this e-mail has been sent out for weeks now. An entry on Adobe’s forum posted in late September indicates that a similar message – with the subject line Adobe PDF Reader software upgrade notification – links to a site that tries to install various malware on the users’ system.

Don’t be fooled by these messages, because Adobe would never send you unsolicited e-mails, even if they want you to patch your software. And even if you are subscribed to one Adobe’s mailing lists, if always pays to be extra careful and check the offered link by rolling over it first.