At R780 per month, Adobe’s suite of products for content creation including Photoshop, Premiere and InDesign are not cheap. The temptation to pirate the software then might be strong, but be wary as the company has started scanning installations for “non-genuine software” in the United States.
The scans are being done with a piece of software Adobe has included in its products since 2014 known as Software Integrity Service (SIS) and is being rolled out to more recent products in the form of updates.
In short, the software scans for and detects non-genuine software. Adobe explains that it, “now runs validation tests and notifies people who are using non-genuine software.”
These tests now also check for software tampering and invalid license keys, something a little bird told us is a key part of getting pirated Adobe products to work properly.
Should Adobe detect that non-genuine software is installed on your computer you will see this pop-up.
Receiving this notification does not mean that you pirated the software, not in the least. In fact the software firm knows this because many back-alley software peddlers make money off of folks who think they’re getting a deal but instead are buying a counterfeit copy of Photoshop, or another Adobe product..
The risk of calling everybody out on piracy then, is too large because you may truly be unaware you bought a counterfeit copy. As such Adobe has said that no action will be taken against those who are found to be running non-genuine software; should that change we’ll be sure to let you know.
Adobe has said that it is simply using SIS to inform and protect its customers about the risks of non-genuine software.
These risks include not being covered by a warranty or Adobe’s support services. You also run the risk of non-genuine software containing malware that could give a hacker unfettered access to your personal computer.
With that risk in mind, at the end of the day we’d rather be R700-odd poorer a month than have some black hat hacker knowing we like to Photoshop ourselves surrounded by every kind of cat in the world.
[Via – TorrentFreak] [Image – SA BY/2.0 Michael Carian]
