COMPANY PROFILE

Adobe

Headquarters: San Jose (California), United States · Founded: 1982 · Listed: NASDAQ: ADBE

2 fines or sanctions2 data breaches

What it does and how it makes money

Adobe sells creative software (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat) by subscription through Creative Cloud, and digital marketing and analytics software (Adobe Experience Cloud) to professionals and businesses worldwide.

Almost all of its money comes from subscriptions: $22,904 million of its $23,769 million revenue in fiscal 2025. ^[1]

What data it collects about you

According to its privacy policy, it collects account and payment details, usage and device data (such as IP address and browser), content you upload, cookie data, and information from partners and data brokers, and uses it also for marketing and advertising. Data that its business customers collect through Adobe Experience Cloud is processed on those customers' behalf. ^[2]

How it turns your data into money

When you buy or use Adobe products, Adobe is the controller of your data and discloses it to other Adobe companies and to 'advertising and sales partners' consistent with your choices, to show you relevant content and for marketing. When a business uses Adobe Experience Cloud to analyse and segment its own customers, Adobe acts only as a processor and that data is controlled by the business customer, not by Adobe's policy. Its personal-data business is mainly selling analytics and marketing tools to companies. If a sneaker store uses Adobe Experience Cloud, it is the store, using Adobe's technology, that records what you looked at to personalise its site and campaigns. ^[3]

Where it is incorporated

Adobe Inc. (formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated), a Delaware corporation with principal offices at 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, California; founded in 1982 and listed on Nasdaq. ^[4]

Taxes and low-tax countries

Its 2025 annual report states that its 'major tax jurisdictions are the United States, California and Ireland' and that its effective rate was below the 21% federal rate 'primarily due to the net tax benefits from effects of non-U.S. operations' ($300 million less in 2025). According to The Irish Times (2018), the subsidiary Adobe Software Trading Company Limited, based in Citywest (Dublin) but domiciled in Bermuda, carries out R&D, licensing, production and distribution of software, had revenue of $3.2 billion in 2017 with profits of $1.04 billion and agreed a $3.2 billion dividend to its U.S. parent. ^[4]

Competition and monopoly

Adobe announced in September 2022 a $20 billion acquisition of Figma. In November 2023 the UK CMA provisionally found the deal would likely harm innovation and the European Commission issued a statement of objections. On December 18, 2023 Adobe and Figma abandoned the merger, seeing 'no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals', and Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee. There is no abuse-of-dominance finding against Adobe. ^[5]

Money

Fines and sanctions

In total: 76 million USD

• U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) · United States · March 13, 202675 million USD
  Settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over hiding an early termination fee in fine print and making subscriptions hard to cancel (ROSCA). It includes a $75 million civil penalty plus $75 million in free services for customers. Proposed order filed in March 2026; court approval was still pending at that date. ^[7]
• 15 U.S. state attorneys general (led by Connecticut) · United States · November 10, 20161 million USD
  Settlement with 15 state attorneys general over the 2013 breach, which exposed customers' encrypted card numbers, expiration dates, names, addresses and phone numbers (about 552,000 residents of those states). ^[8]

Data breaches and hacks

• October 20197,500,000 people affected
  An unprotected Elasticsearch database exposed about 7.5 million Creative Cloud customer records: email addresses, account creation dates, products purchased, subscription and payment status, member IDs and country. It did not include passwords or card data. ^[9]
• October 201338,000,000 people affected
  Theft of customers' usernames, passwords and payment card data, plus source code for Acrobat, Reader, Photoshop and ColdFusion. ^[10]

Ask it to delete your data

This is the page the company itself gives to ask it to delete your data or stop selling it: Open its page ^[11]

With GUARDIANA or GUARDIANA ZERO, you download from this same profile the letter asking it to delete your data, under your country’s law, ready to attach to an email.

Its website

https://www.adobe.com/

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Inc.
2. https://www.adobe.com/privacy/policy
3. https://www.adobe.com/privacy/policy.html
4. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/796343/000079634326000003/adbe-20251128.htm
5. https://complianceconcourse.willkie.com/articles/adobe-and-figma-abandon-merger-citing-regulatory-hurdles/
6. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/796343/000079634325000135/adbeex991q425.htm
7. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/adobe-agrees-150-million-settlement-and-injunction-resolve-alleged-violations-restore-online
8. https://portal.ct.gov/AG/Press-Releases-Archived/2016-Press-Releases/AG-Jepsen-Adobe-Reach-Agreement-Resolving-ConnecticutLed-Multistate-Investigation-into-Unauthorized
9. https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/25/adobe_user_data_exposed
10. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/11/adobe-fined-1m-in-multistate-suit-over-2013-breach-no-jail-for-spamhaus-attacker/
11. https://www.adobe.com/privacy/opt-out.html

What this profile does NOT say

• It does not say this company does anything illegal. The only thing it states about anyone’s legality is what a regulator or a court has already decided, with the date and the link to the source.
• It does not say what data of yours it holds: only the company knows, which is why you have the right to ask it.
• If you are this company and a fact is wrong, write to hola@guardianagroup.com and it will be corrected, with its date.

Public facts with their sources, checked on October 12, 2026. All profiles →