Lies, Lies and Adobe Spies

I too am a Little Snitch user and have found that Adobe likes to phone home for various things, well as you’ve proven, not exactly home.

I love how transparent all these companies are!

2o7.net is the same spyware the iTunes Ministore uses.

You guys really are uneasy. Quite paranoid at that. In a good way, obviously :)

From http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/analytic_app_02.html …

“developing a system where our apps could log events with Omniture, which Macromedia uses for an analytics platform.”

“Omniture is a client-based analytics platform that uses information stored in both JavaScript variables and the user’s cookie to track a user’s progress through a site, giving business insight into how to create better user experiences.”

also… http://www.omniture.com/privacy/2o7

There seems to be an opt-out. All in all interesting, for all we know this started with Macromedia, as found on Adobes site, and this has been going on with Flash, Dreamweaver, and anything else since the purchase…

But is this a flex based app? NOPE… Again… Not saying anything malicious, just something people should question.

Well, I’m not a fan of people spying on me, and I found out about Omniture (and their 2o7.net domain) quite a while ago. I have blocked all cookies from Omniture, but I didn’t know it went all the way into applications. I wonder what other applications send to Omni…

nslookup 192.168.112.2o7.net

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: 192.168.112.2o7.net
Address: 216.52.17.136
Name: 192.168.112.2o7.net
Address: 216.52.17.207

Dan, I was by no means defending Omniture, simply putting some things out from a quick search I found, possibly to shed some more light on the issue. I was thinking along the lines of this hasn’t always been the case in Photoshop, and only happened when Macromedia was purchased and then it’s in alot of Adobe products. Have you checked any others for this? I’d be interested to see what else they’re doing this in…

Hi, I’m not up on the specific details, but I know that the Help system does use live resources on the Adobe site, and the Adobe site uses Omniture for analytics. I think it’s similar to how this weblog contacts Yahoo’s Overture.

If this concerns you, the preferences should contain options to not automatically check for updates. If you’ve got additional concerns please let me know, thanks.

jd/adobe

Wow, good thing Adobe and Omniture are so above board and transparent about this behavior that they try to obscure their URL by disguising it as an internal network IP :p

Sleazilicious!

(nice catch, Dan)

How about every one edit their hosts file to redirect *.2O7.com to 127.0.0.1.

Simple and easy fix to the adobe spies.

The opt out requires you “to install a cookie in your browser”. Since the “browser” here is the Adobe application I am not sure how you would do this.

Putting behavior analysis in an app without notifying the user is one thing, but the fact that the 2O7.net URL was chosen to make it look like a local address is unforgivable. It is purposely misleading and a major breach of trust and ethics (and, I would hope, the law).

Omniture is an outstanding and very powerful Analytics program that I have been working closely with for the past year or so. It is simply incapable of doing whatever malicious thing(s) you might be thinking and is a pretty run-of-the mill system like WebTrends or Web Side Story. The 2o7 domain thing has been around for years, and although strange and perhaps confusing, it is also not intended to be evil.

You need to relax!!! It’s just Omniture… it’s an analytics tool. The same one that’s used on many websites that you visit on a daily basis… you know, like Google Analytics, or Mint… it’s not spyware!

Relax!

Kibby, does Leopard support wildcarded entries in the HOSTS file? I know Tiger didn’t.

Having a fully licensed copy of CS3, bought and paid for from Adobe, it’s amazing how unbothered I feel about this.

I loaded a packet sniffer and then started my copy of InDesign CS3 (5.0.1) to see if I could catch the same behavior.

Sure enough, there was a connection to 216.52.17.207 (192.168.112.2o7.net) via HTTP (port 80).

I did a little tracing and think I understand why.

When you load InDesign, you get a welcome screen with a small customized portion that I’ve highlighted here: http://jsperkins.com/indesign-welcome.png Though that looks like it’s just part of the program, it’s not. It’s actually a Flash file embedded in the dialog.

When InDesign first starts up it loads Flash Player, which contacts (for me, at least) 216.104.208.201, an IP address assigned to the former Macromedia Inc. It requests this location:
GET /go/startpageid?prod=id&plat=mac&lang=en_US&ver=5.0&stat=full

So that’s a “hello, this is ID 5.0 on Mac”. That server responds with a redirect to:
http://www.adobe.com/startpage/id.swf?prod=id&plat=mac&lang=en_US&ver=5.0&stat=full

The player follows. Take a look at that page and you’ll see it’s (a huge version of) the content that appears inside InDesign.

And it seems to be that very SWF that’s pulling the rest. Subsequent Flash Player requests:
http://216.104.208.201/startpage/id_content/id_customize.xml
(Returns some XML with fields “active_params”: ver, stat, lang.)

http://216.104.208.201/startpage/id_content/id_50_full_default.swf?prod=id&ver=5.0&plat=mac&lang=en_US&stat=full&tday=&spfx=&productName=indesign
(Notice the querystring: ver, stat, lang have been filled in by my installation in this request.)

http://216.104.208.201/startpage/om_acct_nm.txt
That text file in its entirety: &omnitureAccountName=mxcentral
(“mx” — another Macromedia reference.)

http://216.104.208.201/startpage/id_content/indesign_50_content.xml
Here’s where the “Get the most out of InDesign” link/text comes from (in several languages)

Then we switch over to 216.52.17.207, the server you noticed. On my install, it requests a URL that begins:
/b/ss/mxcentral/1/F.3-fb/s11988…
Note the “mxcentral” in the path, that was passed in the omintureAccount variable earlier (I assume). The 11988.. portion looks like a timestamp, and there are several more parameters (not shown) including “&c9=id_5.0_mac_en_US_full__” — more version information.

So, it looks like all of this is due to some Flash embedding. Choosing “Don’t Show Again” on the welcome box may alleviate the problem somewhat, but sounds like keeping Little Snitch around would be smart as well.

Or use OpenDNS and block yourself from 2o7.net entirely. Then no matter what computer you use, if it’s linked to that OpenDNS account then you’re saved. i.e. your whole company network, etc.

Kibby: It’s 2o7.net, and I’ve seen that site used for other things. Like llnwd is a host for myspace, AND apple, and probably several others. I know it’s used by There.com even though a google search for site:2o7.net doesn’t come up, so something’s amiss.

Short answer: It’s not just adobe using 2o7, but if you could block 192.168.*.2o7.net (since i’m betting they rotate that *), then that would work.

Wow. Not too surprising. If you want to make your products better Adobe, cool – just let us know upfront that you’d like to track the way we interact with your software. Maybe we’ll participate.

@Kibby : hosts file doesn’t accept wildcards. You’d have to mention every host you’d like to block.

Guys, how can you worry about Adobe’s statistics, when nearly 120 governments do web espionage? Read # 12 here.

thanx, Kibby, changed my host file right away!

You might want to add *.2O7.net too

Look, I understand the need for privacy and I think it should be something users are given an option to opt out of if the above is correct.

That being said, I’d actually say that this is a bold step in many respects. A lot of the time we buy software and use basically 20-30% of the entire application. Now some accept this and put the rest of the stuff not being used as “..one day i may need it..” (never keep track of that).

The end result however is that the Product Teams can devote a lot of time and energy in the wrong areas of interest and the only real way they can guage this via 1:1 interaction with sample folks?

The downside for you the consumer is longer development cycles as you know the minute something gets released that is not only irrelevant but half-baked? well the fur flies.

So what’s the harm here? They could be simply monitoring which parts of the software you actually use, the parts that you seem to spend most periods of time in and overall what parts you neglect.

Guess how they will use this data in future development cycles? I’m not really sure they care whether your a Libra or Cancer or whether you Bank with AMEX or not..

Here’s the part that bakes my noodle. On a website or RIA the above DOES happen, and everyone is accepting of this or it’s that transparent no1 cares. The moment it goes client, all bets have to be off?

That just sufficates innovation and I believe in privacy as much as the next person but there are limits to over doing it…

-
Scott Barnes
RIA Evangelist
Microsoft.

Kibby, redirecting *.207.com will not fix anything. Firstly, the screenshot and article clearly state that CS3 applications are connecting to 192.168.112.207.net. Secondly no applications that I know of connect to 207.com, maybe you are confusing 207.com with Omniture’s 2o7.com domain?

A better fix would be to modify the host file to redirect 2o7.com and 192.168.112.207.net to a safe place.

this must be a MAC only problem?!

i have running commodo firewall on my PC and never noticed such a connection attemp from CS3.

yet another blackhole entry for the hosts file. or if your wireless/wired router supports it, just add *.2o7.net to your “parental” filter.

@Kibby, might want to make that 2o7.net

You could also set up a free account at opendns.com and use that to block the domain.
Plus you’ll get super fast DNS lookups as a free bonus :)

My favourite part of all of this is the absolutely delightful dose of doublespeak and obscuficaion on the “2o7.net Explained” page (http://www.omniture.com/privacy/2o7) … It boils down to “Yes, we are invading your privacy, but here is a nebulous policy about it and a way that you MIGHT opt out but not really, so shut up and go away”

Interesting that it mentions “web visitors” but nothing about applications reporting in.

Also interesting that it makes no mention at all of the obivous attempt (even moreso when you realize that this is an attempt to camouflage URLs when they show up in web status bars) to hide under a seemingly local address.

I haven’t seen anything this sleazy since I read the EULA for “hotbar” … and that is saying a LOT.

The opt-out is cookie-based, so is browser specific. Opting out in Safari won’t have any affect on what CS3 does, as far as I can see.

I have an /etc/hosts file that has 512 entries to XXX,2o7.net that I pick up on the web to intercept stuff like doubleclick by redirecting to localhost. These are all spying and metrics measuring sites for different vendors like autoweb, babycenter.com, nba, national geographic, etc. Check the latest hosts file presented by http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/

if you don’t like the spying without consent, put an entry in your hosts file pointing 192.168.112.2O7.net to 127.0.0.1

it is *.207.net actually.

If you’re considering using Kibby’s redirect, use: *.2o7.net to 127.0.01.

The o in 2o7 is the letter ‘o’ not the number 0. And it’s a .net domain.

Are you sure that it’s actually Adobe’s software connecting, and not some spyware that was infecting your pirated copy?

Heh, you “opt-out” by having them send you an “opt-out” cookie. 0_o
I didn’t realize Photoshop ate cookies at all.

Posting this kind of thing without investigating just contributes to the misconception that corporations are “out to get us”. Essentially you’re seeing a conspiracy where there is none.

The connections to 2O7.net are happening because the splash panel (you know, the one that appears when you launch the application) loads a Flash graphic from the Adobe website to fill in the bottom right hand side of the window.

For instance, you can see the one for InDesign here:

http://www.adobe.com/startpage/id.swf?prod=id&plat=mac&lang=en_US&ver=5.0&stat=full

If you go there, you’ll notice that your browser will also connect to 2O7.net.

The reason for the connection is that Adobe uses Omniture for site statistics; almost every access to their site results in a connection to 2O7.net.

This isn’t some sort of enormous privacy infringement; it’s simply aggregate data collection to provide them with information they can use to optimize their website.

Anyway, if you turn off the splash panel, you’ll find that InDesign and the other CS3 apps don’t connect to Adobe’s site, and therefore don’t talk to 2O7.net.

The problem with all the methods listed here to block Omniture data from being sent is that Omniture allows you to use other domains to send that information to them.

For instance, a unnamed web based reservation system uses http://stats.x.com, Ford uses another such name, etc, etc.

I used to work as a systems administrator for Omniture. They’re presence is everywhere, they have the vast majority of big name companies. If you go to ebay they track you, file your taxes with turbotax online? They track you doing that, and yes they can grab whatever info that the customer requests. Your best bet is to redirect the 207.net domain, but that isn’t the only way of tracking you and the 2o7.net domain isn’t the only domain that they use.

@Kibby: That should be:

127.0.0.2 2o7.net # 127.0.0.2 is another loopback address

Add that to the hosts file: /etc/hosts for Unix/Linux machines, so it should work on Mac.

Having worked with Omniture as an analytics package, they aren’t exactly “evil.” Their privacy policy is a lot more strict and secure than any offered by Google, and the data they mine is essentially analogous to that gathered by GA.

That said, if you are uncomfortable with Omni, Fireclicks, Coremetrics, Webtrends, Google Analytics, etc. mining your browsing habits block their cookies when you browse.

But also expect a lot more of this embedded behavioral monitoring in the future, Behavioral Targeting is one of the “big” things in marketing this coming year.

- an analyst.

It is so sad that companies haven’t learned that doing these kind of things is just not very useful in the long run. Besides making a lot of the people who actually pay their salary by buying their products upset. Does the data really give them something that will make the product better or are they using it to sell the product?
I believe that when given the opportunity to provide (with full disclosure) usage data to improve a product people will choose to opt-in. So the only reason any program should without letting the customer opt-in send information back to anyone is if they want to spy on their customers. Which is not a good long term business plan.

Oh look, they offer an Opt out option:
http://www.omniture.com/privacy/2o7?f=2o7#optout

Kibby: actually, it’s 2o7.NET perhaps in addition to 2o7.com.

Windows users: Consider using the pretty robust HOSTS file at: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

I use it and my subsequent spyware/cookie sweeps using Ad-Aware and Spybot have been much cleaner. They’ve got a pretty big block dedicated to 2o7.net. ;)

Jeez, it’s bad enough that Adobe makes us activate the software but we’re too addicted to switch to any other programs despite all this bullsh*t.

Do as Kibby suggests and the setup an apache at that ip to see what page it tries to access (should be visible in error.log). Create a page with the same url/name that shows up in the log and try get/fetch/whatever the http post or what it´s trying to do. Then you maybe can see what information it wants to send to Omniture.

I would hope any developer of such a program like “littlesnitch” would want the program itself to be open source and free so we don’t have to fsck with licenses or codes or worry that “littlesnitch” may be phoning home itself or worse.

Look, closed source programs are virtual black boxes, if you can’t read the code, you don’t know what it is capable of, end of line.

If it’s closed source, and you use it, no matter how many e-penises are rubbed in claims of security and privacy by the creators, you deserve what you get.

I’m so sick of people trolling the iPhone article. Even the people who debunked the IMEI transmission agreed that tracking information is exchanged between Apple and your iPhone.

re: http://www.omniture.com/privacy/2o7 (OPT-OUT)

read it. in order to opt-out you need an “opt-out cookie” in your browser, which you will need to update anytime you get a new computer, or browser, or flush your cookies.

one thing… it’s not my browser that’s phoning home! the “opt-out cookie” needs to be sent from photoshop, or it won’t do anything to curb the problem!

starting the web address 192.168.* is a deceitful way of tricking certain routers into trusting this (or any) domain.
112.2o7.net is a deceitful way of tricking certain users into allowing the pop-up they get from Little Snitch (or whatever)

the fact that the “out-out” is only accessible through my web browser, yet the behavior that i want to stop only happens from the embedded browser in the application… they’re blowing smoke (pure BS)

i’m thinking, these guys know statistics… not scruples.
“if we buy this domain, statistically, more routers will allow our connection.”
“if we offer what looks like an opt-out, statistically most people will just believe us…”
mathematically, this is true, sadly. forget people’s “rights” or whatever…

point is, what you say doesn’t matter, all the stats see is how you behave. i see this BS, i block all access to the server, no mercy. works fine for me, but they NEVER see it. solves my problem, never makes the statement.

what does work? bad press, which they can twist, or suppress as slander, and attacks on the server (DDoS, etc.) which are illegal too.

QUESTION: how can we mangle the data, mimic the “call home”, 12 times a day, each time with 100 random spoofed IPs, random valid serial number, random computer specs, etc.??? help them collect as much of my “data” as they can handle?

A couple of points about this software calling Omniture (reports indicate that it also connects to 192.150.18.101, which looks almost like a private 192.168 number, but is actually owned by Adobe, but not one that they use for most of their public presence).

First of all — when you connect to Google, you’re pretty clear that you’re connecting to google, and have a good idea as to what information you’re giving them. You’re also connecting ‘for free’, and this turns out to be the cost of the ‘free’ service.

Adobe/Omniture, on the other hand, are doing this on the sly. They’re not telling you what they’re doing or what information they’re gathering, and they’re trying to mask it by using IP addresses that I would normally associate with phishing sites.

Almost as important, most of this is paid software. If I’m forking out $n00[0?].00 for a piece of desktop software, I’m not expecting to have it spying on my the way that I would accessing a ‘free’ website.

can’t OSX’s firewall block ALL traffic to/from that ip address?
based on my experience with freebsd, osx should be very similar, you can edit /etc/firewall file and add the following entries to block all traffic, browser or application:
deny any from 216.52.17.0/24 to me
deny any from me to 216.52.17.0/24

I agree with blocking spys in the hosts file. After all, M$ & Co. can always ASK for volunteers to track software usage (like the old days)…

A regularly updated list of ad sites is maintained here: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

I sudo into my /etc/hosts file in the shell with pico and paste the list. Pretty simple to do on a Mac.

If you check the list updated as of 12/10/07, the Adobe spy is included.

I love how people imply that since it’s omniture, and used “just for web analytics” that it can’t be malicious.

I’ve used Omniture and now WebTrends with Marketing Lab. it’s fairly easy to determine who an individual is on a generic web site (reply to any single form), but when you must register software??? That’d be golden. I could identify your usage traits and build a very robust history.

What makes it even better is you, the user, will have no way of determining whether I’m collecting any information from you. You’d just see an ID being passed in javascript to the address. Maybe a few generic items, but the gold is in those ID numbers.

You want to have fun? Forget blocking the host. Try this…

Option 1: Run Fiddler2 on a Windows box while you turn up CS3. Look for a request to that address, and then look within the request details. You should see something to do with an ID.

Make a backup of your registry. Once you find it, run your registry editor and look for that key value. You may have to dig to find it, but once you find it make a few changes to that key. Keep the length and form (numbers still numbers).

If I know Omniture, I’m betting that throws them off,

Option 2: Identify the key value being used in Fiddler as above. Encourage hundreds of friends to do the same. Signup for a web monitoring service, where you can craft the custom HTTP call. Set it for every 10 or so (randomize it if possible), and have those calls keep calling Omniture. You can’t do it too much because it’s easy to filter, but if you get enough people doing it on a high frequency it’ll really screw with their measurement. A couple hundred people doing it every 10 minutes is tens of thousands of hits per day, hundreds of thousands per month.

Let me start by saying that the kind of tracking Adobe appears to be doing is pretty harmless to you end users. Now let me ask a question to all these people, who became so paranoid about Adobe and Omniture Tracking. “Do you know that you are being tracked at a lot of places?” I am sure you have done one or more of the following

Connected to the internet – Do you know that ISP track of what you do online? You should read my blog post titled “ISP Based Behavioral Targeting.
Visited any site on the internet? – A lot of sites (and in fact they all should) track user behavior to create a better experience for users and to help them in their business goals.
Installed a toolbar – Do you know that their activity is being tracked by toolbars you install?
Used any social networking site where they volunteered all sorts of information.
Used a credit card. – Yes they have whole history of what you bought, when and where.
Bought a product on any major retail chain, used a credit card or a club card. – They keep track of what you buy, when and where too.

Since you are tracked everywhere, why is there a paranoia about being tracked by Adobe? Actually the kind of tracking Adobe is doing is not even close to the information you are giving away via other activities (some of them mentioned above). The kind of tracking adobe is doing is to understand the usage of their sites and provide a better experience for the users. The way I understand, Adobe is looking at user behavior at an aggregate level and not at an individual level, most of the companies doing web analytics do not look at individual user behavior. Most of the web analytics tools, like Omniture, use an anonymous cookie to track user behavior. This anonymous tracking usually looks at aggregated data for entire user base (or few segments) instead of an individual and hence do not invade your privacy.
So I request you to stop this paranoia about tracking by web analytics tools. They are helping you to have a better experience on the web.

Note: I am not associated with Adobe in any way. I have never worked for them in any capacity and do not know anybody personally at Adobe.

Read my response at

http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/12/unnecessary-outcry-over-adobe-cs3-and.html

Hmm… This is very interesting, but I wonder…. How many people shocked by this ” major breach of trust and ethics” have a genuine licensed copy? I think that if one has nothing to hide, one needn’t draw their curtains…

I have been in Photography for about 35 years, and have now retired. I have found that a vast number of people know more about photography than I do, and with the new system of Digital, it appears that I even know less, even though I was forced int Digital imaging in the early 1990′s.
When I see many of the websites , I some rimes wonder and can under stand why many photographic departments have closed down, eg Post Office did have 60 photographers when seperated from BT they had all gone, all made redundant, so it goes on.

So please, give me a reasonable explanation why I needed to register my CS2 apps again when I returned to France after my trip to Germany?

I took my PowerBook with me for the holiday in order to finish some work. After my holiday, I wanted to start working again on my Apple G5 computer.

I come back to France, I switch on my G5 workstation, started Photoshop and blubbb, I needed to go through the entire registration process once again. I had to do the registration process twice which is strange enough.

Step 1. I did the software registration over the internet. Adobe said, thank you for registration.

You are now allowed to work with your purchased software from Adobe and are able to continue doing your homework.

Wow, thank you Adobe.

Step 2. I have closed the Adobe app after registering. I launched the Adobe app once again and I see the Adobe registration process popping up once again! (I have restarted my computer after finishing the registration process if I rember well.)

Step 3. I registered my Adobe CS2 suite AGAIN. And this time Adobe was so “intelligent” to remember my registration process.

Conclusion. It is NOT Adobe’s business to know WHEN, I am working on my machine, IF I am working on my machine, IF I am working on my PowerBook or my G5 workstation and for sure it is NOT Adobe’s business to know from WHERE I am actually doing my job.

The other question would be.

Why DO I have to register Adobe software over the internet anyway if I have purchased the software through Adobe’s online store by downloading the files from ADOBE’s website and getting the serial number directly from Adobe?

I make a comparison. I am selling design templates on my website. I am the company providing these products.

However, is it MY business to know WHEN, IF and HOW my customers are editing my design templates?

Answer: NO

It is definitely NOT my business to spy on MY customers. Why should I?

So why should Adobe?

graphically & sincerely,

Marc Klein

I would like to make a comparison:

If I am buying a car of a major car manufacturer. Is it the interest of this company to know where, if and when I am driving with my new car?

The fact that I have bought a car from one company does not give this company the right to know how, if and when I am using my new car. Wouldn’t you agree?

graphically & sincerely,

Marc Klein

Calls are made to the *.2O7.net subnet when Adobe software or a web browser fetches content from Adobe.com.
Because the Welcome Screen in your Adobe software is designed to fetch up-to-date content from the Adobe website and than display this content within the Welcome Screen, your software makes calls to this address at startup.
If you would prefer that the software not make these calls, simply disable the Welcome Screen in your Adobe software by selecting the Don’t Show This Again option in the lower left corner of the Welcome Screen. And stop complaining.

Adobe cares about you!!

Dan, when you said:

But is this a flex based app? NOPE… Again… Not saying anything malicious, just something people should question.

,,,are you referring to Flexnet? Because if you are, CS3 is using it and it goes way beyond trying to dial out because Little Snitch won’t catch it. It uses a trusted port to dial out like Safari.

Are you familiar with Flexnet? And if you are, do you know how to block it or what port it communicates over so I can manually block that port? And also, does Flexnet communicate even if CS3 is not running?

Thanks
Eddy

Go to their website and opt out of having your information gathered by Omniture. If the information is then still gathered, report the company to your local authorities. There are laws in many countries that are there to protect you, whether to protect your data or to ensure any advertising (virtually anything written or portrayed on a site) is accurate and not misleading. Use them, they work!!

For those of you complaining about this… I sure hope you aren’t using any tracking or analytics code in your web sites or it would be very easy to call you a hypocrite because you are doing the same thing.

Like someone else said… don’t use pirated software and it shouldn’t bother you.

*don’t use pirated software and it shouldn’t bother you*

Don’t stash drugs inside you and the anal probing at the airport shouldn’t bother you.

Bandwidth has a cost, sure 2 Kb every 30 mins is not a lot… unless you are a 3rd world university, running 900 computers using PAID copies of that crapware, is adobe gonna pay for the bandwidth costs?

*Used any social networking site where they volunteered all sorts of information.*

I’ve got a Facebook account, and i’m releasing a lot of personal information. I’m not retarded, i’m doing it on purpose, VOLUNTEERED is the keyword. It is so arrongant from companies to believe that they don’t have to ask for our permission to do stuff like this.

*don’t use pirated software and it shouldn’t bother you*

Use open source software and it shouldn’t bother you.

Well, good ol’ J.Nack answer.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/12/adobe_ate_me_ba.html

I don’t wear a tin hat (because I found out they don’t work LOL) hey maybe they are just supposed to reflect bad waves but in reality actually have every one that wears them on around the clock surveillance. Now that I got that out of the way why doesn’t someone tell me why people people such as Felipe Budinich just did, always use the excuse that if you are not doing something wrong then drop your pants and let everybody see in? When the reverse is true , that If we are not doing anything wrong then there is no need for you they or who-ever to spy on us! And anyone who see’s different must be either a spy or wan to be dictator or promoting such devices themselves. Now pin that to your tin hats (We know you wear one also.) talk about hypocrites!
P.S. try to get rid of all adobe files from an hp drive, even though you are not using it to boot from but as a storage device after that fatal board crash! . any takers on that side? Been there done that.

Sorry Felipe Budinich I didn’t intent to insinuate that you were all for that stuff, just some bad grammar on my part. (Or wording)
But while I am here within the tin hat community I’d like someone to tell me why people can’t see the tree’s for the forest when it comes to understanding that the more secure things become, the more hazardous they are when things go wrong. Such as a universal ID; once broken, stolen . bla bla bla, the easier it is for anyone to wreck havoc. It makes about as much since as storing your password inside a credit card. LOL

Adobe has chosen to default the Flash program settings to periodically send your personal information from your computer to theirs.

Even though end-users may have selected certain browser settings, cookie saving and caching options to reflect their online privacy preferences, Flash does not comply with the global settings.

Flash secretly saves end-user browsing history, cookie settings and cache files separately. This happens in the background without end-user knowledge or disclosure. Adobe has in effect chosen to do their own thing which helps feed the tiger of “user profiling”, “data mining” and “activity tracking” and “bypasses all firewalls by hijacking your internet browser seeing as your browser has permission to use the internet”

flash player is in fact total spyware and really imho a class action lawsuit should be filed vs the data mining trolls

http://www.freshbot.com/archives/2009/03/31/adobe-flash-phones-home-uncontrollably/

“Anil Batra quote”
>Connected to the internet – Do you know that ISP track of what you do online? You should read my blog post >titled “ISP Based Behavioral Targeting.

Depends on the isp user end legal agreement,mine doesn’t do that and if one trys to go their covertly = lawsuit}
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>Visited any site on the internet? – A lot of sites (and in fact they all should) track user behavior to create a better >experience for users and to help them in their business goals.

Disable cookies~purge cookie on browser close,proxy server,dynamic ip.
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>Installed a toolbar – Do you know that their activity is being tracked by toolbars you install?

only morons install spyware toolbars.
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>Used any social networking site where they volunteered all sorts of information.

Keyword volunteered, in abobes case and Trojan spyware virus scenarios its involuntarily,and ill look you up after so i know everything about you see as you wanted to shair that info with big bother, the state and the world.
*checks to see if cellphone gps is active*
and don’t get me started on RFID chips grrrr.
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>Used a credit card. – Yes they have whole history of what you bought, when and where.
>Bought a product on any major retail chain, used a credit card or a club card. – They keep track of what you >buy, when and where too.

And they are bound by law not to shier that info with anyone unless a warrant is issued by a court of law,in
abobes case this isn’t whats going on , their just stealing anything they want from your computer covertly in regards to how you use it on the net and probably more.
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to answer your question simply Amil Batra, because moron its a Trojan horse spyware keyloger data mineing pos.

the way you see things i guess you won’t mind it then if i send you a email that installs a Trojan covertly on your computer that gives me 100% control over your computer and allows me to use your computer as a zombie proxy computer for any task i might want it and or to take anything i want off your hard disk drive.
RIGHT ?

cus if your answer is NO to everything you just said then your a two faced, double standard, Abobe brown noser hypocrite.