Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 call home

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We just downloaded and installed Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 on a second workstation using the same license.  The second installation is permitted under Adobe’s terms and conditions.

https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/acrobat-2020-downloads.html

When we open the app, while running Task Manager, we note that Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 appears to be calling home.  Or in any case, we notice a jump in internet traffic while the app is opening.

Does anyone have any idea on how to block the app accessing the internet?

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I’m no expert on the details of how to go about doing it, but from a conceptual angle I can think of two things that might do what you want: 1) Set up a firewall rule denying Internet access to the Adobe process(es) that are trying to phone home; or 2) use either the hosts file or your router to block the URL that Acrobat is trying to reach.

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Kathy Stevens

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The easiest and quickest way IMO is to use sordum.org’s small, free, portable FAB (Firewall App Blocker). It saves you having to use the built-in Windows Firewall UI which, IMO, is torturous.

1. Download, unblock, unzip then use Run as administrator to run Fab_x64.exe.

2. When it opens, use Options > Add to exe context menu.

3. *Right*-click on Adobe Acrobat shortcut and choose Firewall App Blocker > Block in Windows Firewall.

An example using a shortcut to the Kindle app:

This results in:

4. Close the FAB app (it’s just another way at looking at the Windows Firewall)… ‘cos you’re done.

IMO this is much, much faster and easier than navigating the Windows Firewall‘s manual New Rule UI… and here’s the new rule added:

Hope this helps…

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Kathy Stevens

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[Bob99]

@Cybertooth and @Rick-Corbett both have good variations on one thing I was going to suggest…establishing a firewall rule that blocks Acrobat from phoning home through the firewall in the first place.

From another perspective, the phoning home could be for the submission of data regarding the program’s usage and installation or it could be for update status, i.e. it’s checking for updates that may be available.

To try and stop it from phoning home with usage data, try digging around in Acrobat’s menu item labeled “Preferences” at the bottom of the “Edit” menu. “Edit” is one of the items along the top row of the window. Preferences has a ton of settings and one or two of them may very well take care of the phone-home-with-data behavior.

As far as automatically checking for updates goes, check to see if you have the Acrobat Update service running, and if you don’t want the computer to d/l and automatically install any updates that are available, then (using Windows’ “Services” module) stop the service and set it’s startup type to disabled. If you took that route, please read the following items to further hamper its ability to phone home for updates without your say-so, otherwise please disregard the remainder of this post.

After doing that, go into Windows’ Task Manager and disable the item labeled “Adobe Acrobat Update Task” task in the root of the “Task Scheduler Library”. To get there, launch Task Scheduler and then click once (left click) on the item in the left side panel labeled “Task Scheduler Library”. Be careful to NOT click the arrow that’s next to that item, as you don’t want to expand it out or down, you just want to highlight it.

One of the tasks in the root is labeled “Adobe Acrobat Update Task”. Click on it to highlight it, which will also allow you to disable it using the items shown under the word “Actions” in the panel on the right side of the window.

If you now double click on that update task, you will be looking at its’ property sheet. Click the tab at the top labeled “Triggers”. This will show you the names of both of its’ triggers and you’ll be able to double click on each one to display a sheet that will allow you to disable that individual trigger by clearing a checkbox at the very bottom of the sheet labeled, appropriately, “Enable”.

I’ve had success with the above procedure for a good number of years with a great many editions of Reader, but I’ve seen the same settings on computers that I’ve used with Acrobat on them instead of Reader. The one “gotcha” is that every program update that’s installed will undo these changes to allow it to phone home to look for and install updates seamlessly in the background without your knowledge or permission.

I hope this helps, at least a bit!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by Bob99.

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