Adobe Express

Is Adobe Express safe?

Adobe Express is a low-risk app for making posters, social posts and short videos. You will meet very few strangers in it, Adobe scans uploads for abuse material, and since June 2024 its terms say it does not train generative AI on your work. The weaker points sit around it: an App Store label that lists tracking and data used for Adobe's own advertising, and a record on subscriptions that led to a $75 million US civil penalty in April 2026. We score it 57/100, just below Canva (58).

The 2024 terms of use row

In early June 2024 Adobe pushed a routine re-acceptance of its terms to Creative Cloud and Document Cloud users. Many users read the new wording on content access and moderation as Adobe reserving the right to look at, or train AI on, their unpublished work.

Adobe answered twice. On 6 June it said it needed a limited licence to run features such as background removal, and that content stored on its servers may be screened, with human review, for illegal material such as child sexual abuse images. On 10 June it promised new terms by 18 June that would say:

• You own your content, and any licence Adobe needs does not override that.
• Adobe does not train generative AI on customer content; Firefly is trained on Adobe Stock and public domain material.
• Adobe does not scan files stored only on your device.
• Humans review your content only if the automated scan flags it, if you ask for support, if you post it publicly, or if the law requires it.

That commitment is the main reason Adobe Express scores better than Canva on privacy. Canva's policy lets it train AI on your designs, within your settings. Adobe still uses usage data and "content characteristics" for non-generative machine learning, such as masking tools, and you can opt out of that.

Tracking and advertising

Apple's label lists identifiers as data that may be used to track you across other companies' apps and websites. For Adobe's own advertising and marketing, it links your name, email, coarse location, user ID and device ID to you. Analytics covers purchase history, search history and how you use the app. Google Play adds that device IDs are shared with other companies for advertising and marketing.

Adobe's privacy policy, updated on 24 October 2025, says it shares information about pages you visit and ads you saw with social media platforms and other ad partners. Its websites honour the Global Privacy Control signal, and there is a "Do not sell or share my personal information" link. Most processing happens in the US and India. Account data is kept while you remain a user, and some transaction records for ten years.

The $75 million subscription case

In June 2024 the Justice Department, on referral from the FTC, sued Adobe and two executives, alleging that it hid a large early termination fee on "annual, paid monthly" plans in fine print and made cancelling hard. Adobe disputed the claims. The parties settled, and on 10 April 2026 the federal court in San Jose entered the order: a $75 million civil penalty, $75 million in free services for customers, clear disclosure of any early termination fee, express consent before charging, and a simple way to cancel. Adobe Express is one of the products the order covers. The defendants neither admitted nor denied the allegations.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority opened its own consumer protection case on 19 March 2026 over the same fee term. It has made no finding.

For users, the practical lesson is about billing, not data. Before you subscribe, check whether a plan is monthly or "annual, paid monthly", because cancelling the second early has cost a fee.

Security

Adobe's 2013 breach exposed about 152 million account records, including emails, usernames, passwords and password hints, according to Have I Been Pwned. That is more than ten years old and does not lower our score; we found no breach of Adobe Express since. Adobe runs a bug bounty on HackerOne and widened it in May 2024 to cover Firefly and Content Credentials. Google Play says data is encrypted in transit. Files are not end-to-end encryptedEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary, which is normal for a cloud design tool that has to render your work.

How to use Adobe Express more safely

1. Choose a monthly plan, or read the early termination fee terms before you take an annual one.
2. Deny the tracking request on an iPhone, and use the "Do not sell or share" link on adobe.com if you are in the US.
3. Use the content analysis opt-out that Adobe's privacy policy links to, so your files are not used for product improvement.
4. Children under 13 should use the school version their teacher sets up, not a personal account.

How we scored it

Scams and harmful content (78) is the strongest factor: little contact with strangers and automated scanning for abuse material. Privacy (45) is held back by tracking and ad data in the label, despite the promise on AI training. The regulatory record (45) ties with privacy as the weakest factor, because a $75 million civil penalty is a large fine under our rules and it counts in full, since consumers were the harmed party. Security (63) reflects a bug bounty and no breach in the last decade. For another all-in-one creative app, compare CapCut.