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Adobe to deactivate accounts for all Venezuelan users due to US sanctions

Because of the White House's sanctions, users aren't eligible for refunds either.
Written by Catalin Cimpanu, Contributor
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US software giant Adobe is canceling all subscriptions and deactivating all accounts for Venezuelan users as part of its efforts to become compliant with sanctions imposed by the Trump administration over the summer.

The company is giving Venezuelans until October 28 to download any files stored in their Adobe accounts.

"After this date your account will be deactivated," Adobe said in a support document published today.

The company is currently emailing all impacted users with instructions.

The ban impacts users of both free or paid Adobe services. Users won't be able to pay for new services, and they won't be eligible for refunds.

Adobe cited the White House's Executive Order 13884 as the reason why customers won't be getting refunds.

Signed in August, President Trump's order imposed new economical sanctions on Venezuela, citing human rights violations carried out by the regime of Venezuela's current president, Nicolas Maduro.

The order, backed by the US Department of Treasury, bans US companies from having any business relations with Venezuelan entities, may they be private companies, government organizations, non-profits, or individual citizens.

The US has similar full bans on other countries as well. The list includes Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

Not all US companies follow these bans, but the bigger tech giants do follow US Treasury sanctions to the letter of the law.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, PayPal, and many others are known for banning users from the above-mentioned countries. The latest case is Microsoft, who in July, started enforcing the US Treasury ban/sanctions list on GitHub, a service it bought last year.

Update, October 10, 5:35pm ET: In an emailed statement, Adobe told ZDNet they changed course on the initial decision and the company will refund users. Also, Adobe's Behance service will remain accessible from Venezuela.

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