Thursday, August 18, 2016

The Sad State of Foxit Reader

The tl;dr is:  Foxit Reader, tracks your usage and sends it to their servers (in China!!), installs a service that you can’t uninstall without uninstalling Foxit Reader, and is not proxy aware.  There is currently no way to disable any of the cloud based functionality, or user tracking.  Long version below:

After installation, you can see the Foxit Reader Service installed (left), but no option to uninstall the service (right), whereas previous versions you could:


If you disable the service as shown above, Foxit will give you the below prompt EVERY TIME you open a pdf or start the application:








Foxit Reader sending your IP and MAC address to Foxit's servers

Logging data sent to Foxit's servers

 The below shows a list of User Agent's found in the FoxitConnectedPDFService.exe memory:




Lastly, the Detected field shows the protections Foxit has put in place on the exe:



3 comments:

  1. 1. Use these instructions to delete the service
    http://www.windowsvc.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=windowsvc&wr_id=86632
    2. Delete or rename the "FoxitConnectedPDFService.exe" file in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader" folder.
    3. You will have to do this again if you update Foxit Reader

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. Open the file location in Windows Explorer (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\FOXIT SOFTWARE\FOXIT READER)
    2. Alt-Click the file --> Properties
    3. Select the Security tab
    4. Click Advanced
    5. Change Permissions
    6. Uncheck 'Include inheritable permissions from this object's parent'
    7. Click Remove to remove the inherited permissions
    8. Click OK, OK, OK, to close all the dialigue boxes

    FoxitConnectedPDFService.exe now has zero permissions - the file is no longer allowed to run. You will still need to end the process in Task Manager, but it will not reappear - and you don't get any pop-up prompts telling you FoxitConnectedPDFService.exe is broke when you open pdf files :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I will just uninstall it completely as anything this nefarious has zero business running on anyone's computer, especially coming from a communist country with atrocious human rights abuses.

    ReplyDelete