The plugin is not deprecated (nor depracted) and does not have security issues. Ignore Digico.
The problem you’re seeing is known, but it only affects certain folks — something about your server config or the PDF you’re delivering in combination with how EBD delivers the file (depending on settings) causes the issue. Below, I am going to paste in a response I gave to someone else about this issue — note that in the response it links to another response of mine that is lengthy & eventually gives option A, B, and C — my guess is that you want to do B or C (as A is complicated). Here is my previous response on this:
See my long discussion of this problem here:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/email-before-download-just-hangs-after-clicking-link?replies=9
Scroll down to my comment that begins:
“The download works for Firefox and other browsers — just not Chrome.”
and then read that entire comment closely.
You have the same problem. Something about your site or your PDF, in combination with the way EBD delivers the file (possibly), causes problems with Chrome’s internal PDF viewer. The person experiencing that problem in that post actually ended up doing option “C” (turn off hide/mask setting). If you have that checked, you should uncheck it and try again.
Note that you may need to clear your browser cache to get a good test because Chrome’s behavior can change based on whether the PDF is cached or not by the browser.
