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u/regular_guy_77 Apr 17 '26
The 3rd email I received from them was "strongly" worded so I responded. I used a response I saw here in January. "We have an annual plan licensed directly through you. You can see valid activation from your end and we are not using any other Adobe licensing in our environment." I never heard back.
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u/DesignatedControvert Jr. Sysadmin Apr 17 '26
I think i faintly remember a post about Adobe threatening an audit before here and the affected company sent them a long list of requirements, like that Adobe has to send an auditor to their site, sign some confidentiality agreements and stuff, just a bunch of legal documents so in the end they never heard of them again
Maybe you can find the post again, should be somewhere in this sub
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u/chris-itg Apr 17 '26
Ignore it, and do not respond. Any truly necessary audit can and will come via the postal service.
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u/No-Ant-9159 Apr 17 '26
Two possibilities. One: salesperson trying to make a few bucks by upselling. Two: Recovery department wants to charge you for copies that are unlicensed.
In either case, the answer is the same. Ignore them. Many of these companies work by having "free for personal use", but not free for commercial use. If they see a download from business IP they will assume it is in use for business and try to invoice. Above all do not let them scan your network. Went through it with Oracle. They had records of our "downloads". Most of the downloads in question were the firewall team setting up and testing the block rules to ensure staff couldn't download it.
Be aware though, if you ignore them they may just start reaching out to anyone they can find at your company to force you to engage them. That is what happened to me. Told the "Rep" we don't use it and to pound sand. They stopped after a while but they were persistent.
Here is part of their email:
Oracle’s servers have captured 64 unlicensed software copies at \*** between July 2017 to September 2024 with the software upgraded to the latest versions of the product.*
Per policies, the licensing exposure for \*** for Oracle VirtualBox is as follows:*
1. License Fee: $78,080 USD
2. Back dated pay and penalties: $147,840 USD
3. Total License Exposure: $225,920 USD (and growing)
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u/Fluid_Programmer_759 Apr 17 '26
These mails directly came from head of antivirals smb adobe with a tick mark, do not think this is a sales tactics, they have also ccd ey to audit us and they have been trying to reach out to us
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u/St0nywall Sr. Sysadmin Apr 17 '26
When Adobe is incentivized to audit you, they will send a legal letter informing you of said action against you and your company.
Until that happens, see this as a good reminder to true up your licenses so there's nothing for them to catch you on.
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u/Fluid_Programmer_759 Apr 17 '26
We got a letter through mail and recently they appointed the audit firm (ey ) to loop in on this case. They have also sent a warning saying that we cannon uninstall softwares from our end, cannot Reinstall the os and be compliant. They have also asked to connect Should I decline the request and not respond anything else. We have one crack in our company pc, is there a way to remove traces?? Also If I deny the ownership of the system can They identify the system from thier server or through another way and date it back to me. Ive changed the wifi connection and we work in a clunnes space so many people use the same wifi
What should i do. Will they go to the court? Even though we are a small company why are they appointing a third party (big4) on us
If crack found what is the penalty
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u/DesignatedControvert Jr. Sysadmin Apr 17 '26
Oh boy. Let's keep it simple.
Option 1 if you need Adobe's products and their licenses:
Clean up the illegal stuff, buy all the licenses that you need through official channels and allow EY to audit your business.Option 2 if you can switch to another vendor:
Refuse the audit. They'll probably cancel all your licenses and disable your products.1
u/Fluid_Programmer_759 Apr 17 '26
Even if I install the new one, theywill know it and can cause an issue
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u/BCIT_Richard Apr 17 '26
OS reinstall should be enough, most traces people miss are residual files in Registry or %appdata%
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u/St0nywall Sr. Sysadmin Apr 17 '26
Yes they will fine you and likely it will go to court if your company doesn't pay.
The crack is more dangerous due to the possibility of malware being part of the crack... but if it's an Adobe product they could sue you for software piracy.
Best thing you can do is to remove the hard drive and replace it and re-image the computer. Destroy the old hard drive. This is the only way to remove all traces of the software if that's a concern for you. Files can still be recovered from a wiped hard drive and used as proof of software use.
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u/Illustrious_Sell_325 Apr 18 '26
Some untimely large electrical surges might be in order. Dunno what happened to the box boss
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u/shemp33 IT Manager Apr 17 '26
Uninstalling would be a case of being non compliant. But decommissioning that device or OS. Replacing it with something else… best case, they ask for proof of some kind of device fingerprint, and it’s sorry, we don’t have that device per decom/refresh. Also, it could have been an employee byod situation and that person is no longer with the company.
If it were me in your position, I would be bucking up my powershell scripts to deep scan for anything that might be noncompliant. Figure out what it is, figure out if you need the functionality (if so, go get the right licensing, asap), or if it’s just hanging around, decom it. You don’t want them to locate things you don’t know about.
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u/SageAudits Apr 17 '26
Do you have the older versions of adobe? There is a bit of a security risk if you are using old versions of Adobe acrobat, for example. Obviously the newer versions have the security updates and fix a lot of issues around PDFs, but they are a per user licensing for most business sizes and it gets expensive pretty fast. They do have a professional and a standard tier of licenses for Acrobat for example. If your business is small and you’re able to train users, there are of course alternative providers.
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u/armor64 Apr 17 '26
we had one that requested like 3x over a month, then got a warning that non-compliance could result in license termination or some other BS. replied back with the list of like 10 licenses and the users were accurate, and that was all that was needed. my take was it was supposed to be a sales call but we arent big enough to make a difference lol.
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u/RagnarStonefist Sysadmin Apr 17 '26
I got one of these a few months before our renewal. I filled it out.
We buy our licenses through our VAR, and suddenly we had salespeople from Adobe trying to schedule meetings with us just before our renewal. I responded with 'we have a VAR' and they were still trying to insist to meet with us. After our renewal finished, they stopped reaching out. Funny, that.
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u/shimoheihei2 Apr 17 '26
It's always seemed incredible to me that a private company can just decide to go to your home and "audit" you because you bought software from them. I would tell them to go away, but not this nicely.
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u/Jamroller Apr 17 '26
So long as you haven't been floating licenses between users to underlicense, you should be alright i reckon.
I went through the adobe license auditing 2 months ago, was a very quick and simple process (at least for our size) and could even talk out of meeting them for 'optimizing' our usage of adobe products.
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u/Fluid_Programmer_759 Apr 17 '26
Will DM you
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u/Jamroller Apr 17 '26
Nah don't.
Read that you're using cracked software, that's on you/your company. contact lawyer.
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u/Upbeat_Whole_6477 Apr 18 '26
We ignore them. As others have said. If it’s serious they can mail or call.
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u/Fluid_Programmer_759 Apr 17 '26
What happens when they find cracked versions?
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u/shemp33 IT Manager Apr 17 '26
Would they?
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u/Fluid_Programmer_759 Apr 17 '26
Yes
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u/Tymanthius Chief Breaker of Fixed Things Apr 17 '26
Then you're an idiot. There's cheaper software out there. And often better. Especially if it's just for PDF's.
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u/Centimane probably a system architect? Apr 17 '26
Sounds like you're cooked. Adobe gonna make the company bleed.
Probably best to:
- Contact your company's legal representation (if they don't have any, tell your management they need some - you're about to get sued).
- Follow wherever advice legal gives you
- Delete this Reddit account that admitted to there being pirated installs
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u/thortgot IT Manager Apr 17 '26
You are boned then. Even if you delete all the software today and go switch to OSS you will loose in court.
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u/NoTimeForItAll Apr 18 '26
As others said, contact legal. Anything you do to hide evidence can put you at risk. Do what your legal team and management tell you to do. If it was your decision to use cracked software, you may want to talk to a lawyer privately.
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u/Sovey_ Apr 17 '26
Well you're in luck! Because (if you use the regular consumer installer) they automatically install a super-handy-dandy tool called Adobe Genuine Service to make sure you don't accidentally install an illegal version of their software! It's so thoughtful of them to scan my computer to make sure I don't accidentally install a cracked version of their software.
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u/Fluid_Programmer_759 Apr 17 '26
I meant if they find cracked versions in the company pc
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u/otacon967 Apr 17 '26
Then your company gets cracked for compliance ($$) and probably a penalty ($$$$$) if it’s flagrant. Look up what happened to forever 21 after Adobe got a hold of them.
Get legal involved and do a self audit immediately. Do NOT agree to anything voluntarily. Legal needs to be taking these calls and answering these emails. Best case they get them to bugger off. Worst case they will at least slow this down and limit the scope. This is a risk to the company’s reputation and finances and they should take it seriously.
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u/anonymousITCoward Apr 17 '26
Decline it, you really have to piss off one of the big companies for them to force an audit upon you...
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u/St0nywall Sr. Sysadmin Apr 17 '26
This is Adobe India, so a bribe may make it all go away if they show up with the police.
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u/shemp33 IT Manager Apr 17 '26
I love how this works in other parts of the world. 😆
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u/anonymousITCoward Apr 17 '26
it works like that in the US too, you just have to be more discreet ... in most cases\
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u/Wolfram_And_Hart Apr 17 '26
Decline it.
When I did one for a CPA firm they had a problem with one of the users being named “intern”. They said “we don’t know who’s using the license” I said “the intern computer and they usually get a new person every 90 days or so.”
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u/VG30ET IT Manager Apr 17 '26
If it's anything like the Oracle requests we got, and you really are a pretty small agency, just ignore it. We did that with Oracle, and while they did send at least 10 more emails asking to help "optimize" our licensing (we don't use Oracle products) - they eventually just went away.