It’s just the welcome page, which has embedded flash, which, as another commenter on the story explained, uses 2o7 for flash usage statistics just like every flash app. Prove it to yourself, just check the “don’t show again” on the welcome screen, quit, and restart. Boom, no Little Snitch alert for 2o7.

Much like the iPhone IMEI non-story put forward by this same site, uneasysilence, this story has been written with little research and with a trollish title so as to generate maximum digg and techmeme hits. I hope the Yahoo ads revenue is worth it for them. Personally I’ve lost a lot of respect for them, it used to be a better site before they started going for total diggbait.

Adobe (John Nack, John Dowdell, Doug Miller) is using the tin-foil hat label to obfuscate the intentions of the tracking code. This is a legally purchased retail product phoning home to report first installation/use along with specific OS and config details. The product manager knew about it from day one, the witless Omniture liaison knew about it before the meeting where it was vetted, and the developers knew about it before RTM.

There are no live links (or anything useful) added to the tracking flash found on the welcome screen. The purpose is obvious and the selected domain enforces suspicions about the seedy nature of this increasingly common practise. Look to previous versions of the product to see how unnecessary this was.

No one is accusing Adobe of phishing, theft, or operating black helicopters. Most are (rightly) upset by this undisclosed “opt-in” behaviour in an expensive stand-alone application.

P.S. I’m someone who actually clicks ‘Yes’, more often than not, when asked to provide anonymous usage data for product improvement. Try it (asking) some time.

But RE: Should Adobe offer you the option to decline this tracking when you install CS3?

I would say no, cause you’re already being tracked through a ping when you complete an install, my guess is that Adobe is just tracking installs started and installs complete.