Adobe secretly modifies your hosts file for the stupidest reason – OSnews

Adobe Creative Cloud silently modifies the system hosts file on Windows and macOS to detect whether Creative Cloud is installed when users visit adobe.com. The technique works by injecting a DNS entry so that a JavaScript-loaded image request succeeds only if the entry is present, revealing the installation status to Adobe's servers. This was introduced as a workaround after Chrome began blocking Local Network Access, which broke Adobe's previous method of pinging localhost ports. The discovery has sparked outrage over software vendors making unauthorized system-level modifications, with comparisons drawn to the Sony/BMG rootkit scandal.