Wednesday, May 21st, 2014, 8:13 pm
EasyJet Powered by Incompetence, Seemingly Requiring Passengers to Install Malware on Their Computers to Just Board a Flight
Filed under: 
arlier today I was horrified when I attempted to print plane tickets that I had purchased last week. Check-in is possible now as the flight is less than 30 days away (that’s the standard accepted by several companies). Upon attempting to obtain the tickets (as PDF, also a common standard among airlines) I was greeted with nothing at all (no download). I proceeded towards an oblivion of cyclical links and cruft. Both Firefox and Chromium were tested for this, even the latest Android. Nothing would work. When pressing on “check in” I’d be redirected to the Adobe Web site. It’s absolutely impossible to do anything else. Adobe would then pressure the visitor to download and install (with full/root access to the system) a piece of spyware/malware known as “Reader”. In the process, by linkage, EasyJet was forcing one to receive more Adobe ads (proprietary software). Everything in the process is proprietary despite the fact that the Web is “open” and all the software I use is FOSS. Worse yet, EasyJet has me running through screens of non-ending malicious advertising while just trying to log in and check in. Without Adobe’s proprietary Reader, on the face of it, one cannot check in at all. EasyJet ought to take a closer look at who’s hired for its IT team to avoid such embarrassment.
EasyJet should know that Reader is not required to open PDFs. Every IT professional should know this.
