should adobe reader launch upon entering un & pw on credit card site?

should adobe reader launch upon entering my un & pw on credit card site.

I go to https://www.accessmycardonline.com/RBS_Consumer/SecuredLogin.do?promoCode=CTZ to enter to view my citizens bank credit card and the user terms license agreement for adobe reader comes up. the first time I clicked accept and then thought I might have installed some rogue software by doing that, so I formatted my entire hard drive (my biggest fear being a keylogger) and it does the same thing, but I noticed some versions of adobe reader dont do it.

whats the deal here? I've heard adobe reader has some vulnerablilities in it, but I did a virus scan and nothing showed up. I have the latest version of the reader 8.1.2 installed with NOD32 av. Why does reader want to access the internet upon visiting my credit card site (a secure site)?

 

I am not a customer of this bank so I can't recreate what you are experiencing. Some banks do publish their account agreements in PDF (portable document format) so the Adobe reader would need to be called up if such a document needed to be displayed to your screen. When you state that only certain versions of Adobe do this, are you replacing the program with an older version and then going to the bank website?

I went to your bank website and I did not get an Adobe program call up from doing so. I am using an older version (5.0) of Adobe reader (I can't update it since it is admin installed). Check with your bank and see if there is any link to a PDF document on their website. Ordinarily, I would not think so, but maybe someone goofed and accidentily inserted some kind of PDF reference on the signon page.

BTW, I always get a prompt to update the Adobe reader program whenever I access a PDF file since I am using an older version. The Adobe program automatically attempts to check what version you have and to compare it with what is the most recent available on the website.

 

thanks...funny thing is..I tried it on my comp which had 8.1.2 (the latest verison) and it always did it. Then I tried it on 2 comps that had never had 8.1.2 installed, only 8.1.1 and they did not do it, so I did a test and upgraded the comps to 8.1.2 and they started doing it...but heres the funny part..after upgrading them, I uninstalled 8.1.2 and reinstalled 8.1.1 but for some reason, they still did it, even though I had removed 8.1.1, why?

but then I did another test and uninstalled the reader all together, and went back to the bank site, and reader did not pop up when I logged in. If it was malware, wouldnt it pop up even after uninstalling reader, becasue its not really reader causing the problem, its the malware right? Unless the malware is exploiting reader and then without reader it has nothing to exploit, I want someone to confirm this isnt the case though cuz I kinda need reader on my comp, its a basic tool.

thanks for the info ccsito, anyone else have any insight into this, or know anything about it?

ccsito, did you enter a un & pw on the site and then click "sign on", thats the only time it did it for me. (just enter anything it doesnt have to be a real un & pw)

 

No, I did not attempt to sign on the website. However, I just tried and it returned this response.

No adobe popup occurred.

 

I don't like giving such programs that much power.

After I downloaded the latest version, I used Hijackthis (version before 2.x by Trend Micro) to remove it completely from the startup list. (There may have been several items to remove)

It noticed it being present as a BHO (browser helper object), I'm not sure if I deleted the BHO by Hijackthis or that I did something else to remove the BHO.

I'm not sure if I did anything with the ActiveX !

My McAfee firewall blocks outbound traffic, and the Adobe Reader has to ask for permission for outbound connection.

 

i'd say your being alittle to paranoid, i guessing your bank is making you read the TOS before you sign in. i wouldn't be too consumed by it.

 

I've never seen that happen before when I point to a PDF link on any website. If there is an autostart function for that on Adobe reader, I've never seen that before. If going to a webpage and pointing to something automatically starts another program, I would place the blame on the webpage author for allowing that to happen. Since I've been online, I've never seen an autostart for a external program (such as Word, Excel, Media player, etc.) just by moving the mouse to a link.

 

i better solution is to have foxit reader installed, instead of waiting for the document to load (and adobe hijack your browser and refuse to let you use another browser window) foxit reader will download it so you can read it later or just refuse to waste bandwidth.