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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Jack Schofield

Adobe acrobatics - and the need for security updates

I had Acrobat 5 on my computer, which I uninstalled by mistake. Is it important? I also have Adobe Reader 7.
Gail Hébert

Adobe Acrobat is a paid-for program for creating Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) files. It's not part of the operating system and it seems unlikely that you ever used it, so no great loss. Adobe Reader is a free program for reading Adobe PDF files, of which there are many. However, version 7 is rather old: the current version is 9.1.

Adobe Reader has had a number of security problems so you should ensure your version is fully patched (there have been 14 security updates for version 7) or uninstall it and install the latest one.

Another free program, Secunia Personal Software Inspector, will check all the software that you have installed and tell you if you need any security updates.

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