John Nack’s blogpost includes a link to a screencapture of the Welcome screen, with its “Don’t ask again” checkbox to turn off resource checks to adobe.com. (Adobe.com does use Omniture to track site requests, just as you use Google Analytics to track this weblog.)

jd/adobe

thanks for the update!

I can’t wait for their response which we can all guarantee will be BS. It’s apparent the feeble attempt at cloaking this is intentional – best thing they can do is fess up to it.

One user asked Adobe about this and an Adobe manager said “Licensing is the only piece of software that writes something to the MBR and you will all agree that we can’t do away with that.”

Another Adobe employee said “I found out from the licensing team and they confirmed that Adobe licensing code writes to master boot record.” and (as part of a thread) “…Adobe’s licensing technology being used by any other Adobe product. I don’t know the exact answer to your question but if you are ok with Adobe’s other product[s] then [product name] should be fine too.”

I use a separate stand-alone workstation just for Adobe software and disconnect it from the network/Internet because of these types of security risks from Adobe (and a few others such as Microsoft).

Some Adobe product installation routines REQUIRE Internet access or the installation will fail. Some of those programs DEFAULT to establishing an Internet connection upon launch and even after the user sets preferences not to access the Internet, the program STILL tries to accesses the Internet upon startup.

The IP address does look like a private IP address but it’s obviously not though I don’t see the problem anyway. Like I mentioned most of the websites you go to use some type of third party analytics company because they want to improve their hosting. You should probably be glad because this is done by a third party company and not Adobe themselves. The reporting back to the companies hiring Omniture/GoogleAnalyics is able to be anonymous in this way. The point is to find out what a bulk of the population is doing… not any one contributor. If they tune their websites to individual browsers they are being completely unreasonable and, for the price paid, that’s not likely. Statistics plays into this.

Finally let’s think about this a bit more. 99% of consumers don’t have a static IP address at home so what, exactly, is going to be tracked? Has anybody here who is afraid of spying actually looked at the traffic involved? Omniture puts a 2×2 pixel image on websites so that a tiny amount of bandwidth is necessary for the statistical information to be gathered. If you pull up a LAN trace and watch what actually happens it should be fairly apparent what is being sent across the network. Also it doesn’t take more than a couple seconds and a bit of software to block outgoing traffic to undesired websites. NetFilter on *nix and Zone Alarm for windows are some examples here. If nothing else is found with actual evidence, though, the explanation so far makes perfect sense. Most companies have online help because it is easier to update and, since it’s on a website, it’ll be statistically monitored. If the splash screen is also doing the same then Opt Out and watch the traffic from your box go down. The last point was the embedded Opera browser and Flash Player which loads online content… considering that Photoshop’s entire purpose is NOT to be online that’s probably user-initiated activity so instead of being lazy put URLs in a web browser of your own and then watch as Firefox “phones home” to Omniture too. In fact, while you’re on your fact-finding quest see how many sites use “tracking” (like this one does as I quickly review what’s been happening here).

I agree with you.

We must refuse to buy closed source programs, for those of you who MUST continue to use closed source applications i advise you to check if the laws in your country prohibit you from STEALING the program.

Many countries outside the USA, including my home Iceland, have no laws against software license theft as long as your not profiting from it (your not selling fake/generated/stolen serials/licenses).

I agree with you.

We must refuse to buy closed source programs, for those of you who MUST continue to use closed source applications i advise you to check if the laws in your country prohibit you from STEALING the program.

Many countries outside the USA, including my home Iceland, have no laws against software license theft as long as your not profiting from it (your not selling fake/generated/stolen serials/licenses).