u/46009361

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Imagine if you make a niche coding hobby project/make a website that's a simple or mesmerizing bouncing ball animation, and you decide to put a domain on it and share it with a few friends, but there's no contact info in the footer. Then, it's shared with more people, who type "contact website owner" into their preferred search engine. Someone is about to contact you, but they look up the address in the Whois records and stumble across an article like this. Now they don't trust you anymore, not understanding how the internet works, and they click off! Why frame articles like that?

On October 4, 2024, I installed Adobe Acrobat Reader as Reader_en_install.exe to crop a PDF file of a textbook and remove margins intended for professional printing. During the installation process, Reader would refuse to install when declining administrator permissions from a UAC prompt. I believe I unchecked the default box to install the browser add-on, but I'm not sure. After installing, I tried using the Custom Scale option, but it required a Pro subscription. Immediately afterward, I closed all my other programs to avoid interference and uninstalled Reader. I used web-based Xodo to crop the textbook later, but I thought Reader was gone. I tried googling the problem, but the AI Overview gave me many reasons I don't remember and registry paths that didn't exist on my computer, and it distracted me from finding the right article.

The installer contained a valid digital signature from Adobe Inc. prior to running. I deleted the executable file a while ago, but there are references in my Chrome download history about it. However, whenever I click my profile picture on the top right of the Google Chrome window and use "Add Chrome profile," the new profile says:

1. Action required
2. New extension added (Adobe Acrobat: PDF edit, convert, sign tools)
3. Another program on your computer added an extension that may change the way Chrome works. // Adobe Acrobat: PDF edit, convert, sign tools / 60,987 reviews / 335,000,000 users // It can: Read and change all your data on all websites, Manage your downloads, Communicate with coordinating native applications / Open in Web Store, Enable extension, Remove from Chrome

My current Windows specifications:

Edition         Windows 11 Pro
Version         25H2
Installed on    ‎2024-‎12-‎03
OS build        26200.8246
Experience      Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.297.0