Yes, but this relies on the program being friendly enough to give you a choice. The OS is not blocking it, it voluntarily refrains. Some are not so polite. For instance, Google Chrome auto-updates without asking permission, and the only way to stop it on Windows is to edit some registry setting. It will update even when it is not running, which annoys me since I have Chrome installed and don't use it, and every so often my computer slows to a crawl, I open Task Manager, and see "aha, chrome decided to update". It doesn't even give me the courtesy of displaying a notice, so I don't have to waste 5 minutes of acting like a detective with task manager.

If you disable the google updater service, it stops chrome from intrusively background updating. Be careful though, as it often gets reenabled when you open chrome.

AFAIR Adobe Viewer does give that option, generally I'm sure you're right.

Yes, they are one of the polite ones. Honestly very few are as obnoxious as Chrome.